A recent article in my local paper cited statistics that roads in Massachusetts are deadlier than ever in 2021, even though the total number of crashes is down due to less crowded roads during the pandemic. It’s theorized that crashes recently are more likely to lead to fatalities, and that this is due to increases in speed and reckless driving. Data at the national level reflects similar trends to those observed in my state. The alarming trend is that after years of the data moving in the opposite direction, driving is now becoming increasingly fatal in Massachusetts and elsewhere in the U.S.
I’ll get out ahead of the stereotypes and note that we Bay Staters – at least those of us residing in the eastern part of the state – have a decidedly-deserved reputation for aggressive driving. Perhaps this is even more obvious to me as a Massachusetts immigrant (Although after 38 years here, I ought to be able to consider myself a native. The problem is that the natives wouldn’t consider me a native, now, or ever.). Arriving here as a relatively new driver from the genteel sunny South, I quickly learned that my new state was a place where “blinkahs” (turn signals) were for losers (“Why would you ever want to give away your intention? Chump.”) and furthermore generations of Massachusetts drivers had been trained that right-of-way went to whoever could first enter an intersection. This gives rise to every changing green light being equivalent to the christmas tree at a drag strip. If there is a driver facing your direction, you are prepared for them to floor it and turn left in front of you. Most do. If they were to use a turn signal, then they’d lose the element of surprise.
Jumping the green has only recently faded in favor of another aggressive driving habit…forcefully accelerating at Yields; with or without looking to see who might be in the main lane of travel. Again, this behavior seems to operate on the idea that the right-of-way belongs to whoever can get “there” first and that yielding is for losers.
In short, “we” (See? There I go assuming nativism that I probably don’t deserve.) pretty much regularly aspire to the vulgarities assigned to us by other New Englanders. But none of that seems to explain the current fashion for excessive speed and flat out aggression behind the wheel.
On my standard route into Boston, from close to the New Hampshire border (Rt. 3 for those familiar), highway speeds routinely vary from zero to about 90 on average…and this is often within the space of a mile.
It’s like the start of an F1 Race. Stopped now, but we’ll all be pushing 100 in less than a mile.
Heavy traffic during peak commuting time creates constant stoppages, and then as soon as one reaches the end of the jam, speeds rapidly escalate back to the “normal” of 90. This results in a lot drivers weaving in and out of lanes as they pass the slowpokes moving at the snail’s pace of 65 or 70 and try to get ahead of the next slowdown. When miscalculations occur, crashes ensue.
The posted speed is 55, and when there are cops out looking for speeders, catching them is like shooting fish in a barrel; but mostly nowadays I think that the “Staties” (our name for the State Police who patrol our highways) just park on the side and wait for accidents. It’s really like this all day long and not just during peak commuting. As a matter of course if the traffic is light and you’re cruising at 80, there will be someone along soon to whip past you at triple digit speeds. You can feel the shock wave as they go past. I see it/feel it every single day. 30 years ago, I would never have thought that I’d find myself typically driving at 80 just to keep up with traffic. In the U.S.
The NHTSA data, as well as personal experience around the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic, shows that a penchant for driving like every day behind the wheel is your own personal Mad Max movie is not restricted to my home state. Add to this the fact that vehicles are getting larger and larger, more capable of high speeds, and that the amount of distracted driving is ever-increasing, and it’s beginning to feel like a bit of a losing proposition to get out on the highway.
Or even local streets. This last point was recently hammered (literally) home for me when I was rear-ended while stopped at a red light in the 45 year old Volvo…by a driver who turns out to have been watching his cellphone’s GPS more closely than the line of stopped cars he was approaching. In this case, the startled driver dramatically scrubbed off enough speed so that his speed at contact was (probably) around a relatively harmless 5mph. Some of Volvo’s safety features from 1972 – mostly body rigidity — did their job and there was no real harm. I held the brakes so that I didn’t get pushed into the car in front of me. But for about 3 seconds as I watched in my rear view mirror that car come up to me at speed, I prepared to kiss the Volvo goodbye. Every day I see similar accidents where neither driver was as lucky as me or (quite possibly pleasantly stoned…it seems when I got out to talk to him) GPS-dude. Combine this level of inattention (and possible inebriation) with the kinds of speeds experienced on the highway, and you can quickly grasp why drivers and passengers are getting killed at increasing rates. As are bicyclists and motorcyclists.
So, how safe do you feel behind the wheel in 2021? How many of you have started to think twice before taking your irreplaceable vintage cars out for what should be a relatively sedate cruise around town?
Are today’s vehicles too powerful (fast) for many drivers who probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a Cozy Coupe not to mention a 2 ton F-150 SuperCrew cab with at least 300HP (the most popular configuration of the most popular vehicle in the U.S.).
And what’s going on in drivers’ heads these past 20 months that results in driving like this guy?
Bottom line, way too easy to get a driver’s license. As to Massachusetts driver’s reputation, I’m a native, and spent a couple of years driving for a limo service from 2016 through 2018. Racked up about 250,000 miles of accident free driving, covering territory that included all of New England, New York, and a few trips to New Jersey. The absolute worst drivers I encountered were along I-95 in Rhode Island, specifically those with RI plates. If a turn signal was used at all, it was simply to warn you that you were about to be cut off. Between the MA/RI state line, down to the RTE 4 interchange in Warwick, it’s like a NASCAR pileup waiting to happen, and especially dangerous due to the haphazard design of the road, with s-curves and frequent speed limit changes throughout the stretch. Head on a swivel absolutely applies. Rush hour traffic on the major routes in and out of Boston were much safer in my experience, but simply due to the overwhelming amount of traffic that kept vehicle speeds to a crawl. I also experienced the rise of Uber and Lyft, and in my personal anecdotal experience found them to be a major detriment to safety. Probably half of my driving involved taking clients in and out of Logan Airport, and the rideshare services had a monumental impact on the traffic and safety there as well.
It seems to me that due to the pandemic, and the subsequent massive drop in rush hour traffic in Boston, it has created a situation where the difference in speeds between someone adhering at or slightly above the speed limit, and those that believe the highway is their personal fast and furious (but without the requisite skill) is the major contributor to diminished highway safety.
I completely agree hat driving licence tests should be difficult and stringent. That’s an easy idea to get onside with…emotionally. It breaks down badly under factual analysis. It would be lovely if driver training worked, but it mostly doesn’t. Even very rigourous driver training doesn’t really help very much, because the problem is less about what drivers (don’t) know, and more about what we (don’t) do. It would be grand if people would just behave as they best should, but that’s not what people do, even highly-trained ones. Even in places with extremely stringent driver training and licence regimens, like Germany, human error is still overwhelmingly the most common cause of car crashes.
This presentation on the subject—by someone who knows WTF he’s talking about—is worth your 24 minutes (less if you watch it at 1.25× speed):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6iBtC6S5c
I would like to say we’d gain more traction making it much easier to lose a driving licence, but in many parts of North America there is no practical alternative to driving, so if we start yanking licences we’d have a bunch of unlicenced (…uninsured…) drivers—not an improvement.
Yes clearly no easy answers. I guess what we really need is a shift in the Overton window as to what is considered acceptable behavior behind the wheel of a multi ton vehicle. Not happening in this country, not soon, probably never.
The deterioration of traffic manners is just one symptom of bigger, deeper, wider problems. I would say we really need a shift in the Overton Window, entire, along with a bunch of other social and societal repairs that aren’t going to happen because creation, betterment, and repair are uphill slogs a whole lot harder and less profitable than the downhill slides of destruction, degradation, and languishment.
I totally agree with that. It would make an already bad situation even worse…given the double-digit percentages of motorists already on the road without licenses and/or insurance.
https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsured-motorists
https://usclaims.com/educational-resources/non-licensed-drivers-responsible-for-20-percent-of-all-auto-accidents/
Just look at Germany…
Hardest to earn the licence and easiest to lose it.
When I moved back to Germany in 2006, I had to exchange the driver’s licence for German one. Fortunately, Colorado and Germany had reciprocating agreement so no driver’s test was required. Just the simple exchange. However, the DMV manager started the battle by asking a stupid question, “How well do you hear?” I replied that the ability to hear has no bearing on the driving skills and pointed out that lot of people don’t always pay attention to the sirens and such.
Feeling insulted, the manager decided to send me to the medical specialist for the extensive evaluation. He want to see whether I was really fit and capable of driving despite my deafness and my 30-plus years of driving experience all over the world. He kept heaping on one excuse after one for four months. I had the social workers for the people with disabilities lined up to gang on the manager. Yet, he was so resolved in following the traffic codes to the letter, even searching for the obscure code that had no relevance to my case.
Then, the manager abruptly decided that I was “unfit” to drive and rejected my application. Incensed, I hired the lawyer to look at the matters, and the terse bandying between my lawyer and the manager continued for six months. I finally obtained the German driver’s licence after ten-month protracted battle.
The lamest excuse he came up was that I might have gotten the Texas then Colorado driver’s licence and never drove ever since. He wanted me to prepare the list of places where I had driven!!! I retorted, “How would you determine whether I actually drove here and there? Do you send a person flying all over the world and asking the people if they had seen me driving on this or that street? I would love that job!”
A very good question. Keep in mind I am about to opine on this after having been in a freak collision last week. Sitting in a car, backed into by an 18 wheeler, pushed 28′, all witnessed by a state cop. How? It was a CDL student and I was in the driveway at Troop I of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. He sought to be a truck driver…
Speeds are way up here also, which began during the pandemic. It wasn’t a problem for a while as traffic volumes were down 40%. Now they are back to normal and speeds have not really declined.
Thankfully I don’t have the urban commute you have. Much of my driving is on two-lane roads but prevailing speeds on winding, hilly rural routes are pushing 70 to 75 in many locations.
An unpleasant addendum to pedestrian deaths…there has been a distinct thing, at least in my orbit, of people jumping off overpasses onto the interstate below. They walked to the bridge, so they are pedestrians…
People are distracted (I’ve seen data where cell phone distraction is a bigger issue in some states than is drunk driving), social interaction is down, and there is a lot of uncertainty for many these days for a variety of reasons. It’s a really bad cocktail, and I can’t help but wonder if the extra-assertive driving we have all seen is simply a manifestation of this.
What’s the cure? Much as I hate to say it, time is likely the best cure for this. In time, things will settle down for many. That said, there are occasions when I hope I’m wrong and this is one of those times; something happening sooner would be welcomed.
What car were you in? I hope it wasn’t one you were fond of.
I was about to say, I hope it was a state car and not one of your own…
It was the 2018 Impala I have at work. The damage wasn’t extensive (the truck was barely moving) but that much weight made its presence known. Nobody was hurt, but it made one hell of a noise inside the car.
The best part of a bad situation is that he won’t be getting his commercial license any time soon.
It’s a form of suicide. When the world turns into an unending torture chamber, people find a way out. Some states have moderated the torture, most haven’t.
We have almost daily bridge jumpers here.
Whew, Mr Sun… I suspect this piece will generate a lot of good, insightful comment!
I think much of the situation can be traced to a combination of distractions, dumbing-down of drivers (as a New England native, I know Mass-holes were already there), and a general deterioration of manners… this perhaps accelerated by social media.
Cell phones, non-intuitive touch screens, and features of “infotainment” systems all create distraction opportunities. An increased reliance on semi-autonomous features such as lane keeping and adaptive cruise control (both of which I keep shut off on our cars) invites attention diversion as well. These are low-hanging fruit, in my mind.
Manners, in general, have gone out the window… especially in heavily populated areas. The ability to insult and demean people without consequence on social media may be a catalyst here. Such behavior can easily transfer to driving attitude.
As to dumbing-down… maybe we were just always poorly-trained. When compared to some other countries (notably in my experience, Germany) US drivers are pretty horrible, with unpredictable, undisciplined, untrained behavior. behavior. The old Smith System is still valid; I wonder if it is still taught?
Smith System was taught at my current employer, sadly discontinued in my department for what I suspect were budgetary cost analysis issues. If the trainees don’t buy into it, and the company vehicles continue to get damaged at the same rate despite the training, well you get the picture. For me it basically codified the defensive driving habits that I’ve accumulated over the many years. I’d say it would be a good mandatory addition to basic driver’s ed.
I agree that this has a lot to do with poor driving behavior. It seems that we’d been experiencing a general coarsening of society (especially, like you note, in heavily populated areas) for some time, but this trend has been amplified over the past few years. Basic respect seems nearly extinct in the Washington, DC metro area where I live, and not just on the roads. Hatred, or at the very least indifference, towards others now seems to be the default emotion. I place a good chunk of the blame on social media, though I doubt the blame stops there. Just my opinion/observation.
Another trend that I’ve noticed is that while in previous decades, it seemed like most of the egregiously bad driving behavior was done by young males (teens and young adults)… now, that’s not the case. An aggressive driver is just as likely to be a woman, or someone in their 40s or 50s — I don’t know exactly when that happened, or if others have noticed this, but my wife and I have commented many times on that phenomenon.
As just one example: a few years ago, the father of a friend of mine was beaten to death in a road rage attack here in Northern Virginia. His attacker was in his 50s. Since that time, I’ve become much more attuned to aggressive types of behavior that can lead to tragedies like this, and it’s downright sad how often I see it, and from all types/ages of people.
As a fellow DC-area resident, I couldn’t agree more. There’s an underlying anger on the roads here I hadn’t experienced before, and it’s certainly getting worse. Couple that with a willing disregard for basic traffic rules – blowing red lights, passing on solid yellow lines, etc. – and I’m absolutely feeling less safe these days.
My wife and I have also noticed here in the Dallas-Ft Worth metro that aggressive drivers span the demographic spectrum in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, etc. Given the amount of in-migration from other parts of the U.S. (and the world, really), I cannot say whether that is a product of local conditions or new residents bringing bad driving habits with them from elsewhere. And, I would add that some of the most aggressive driving I have seen here has been in exurban and rural areas along the interstates, with speeds well into the triple digits.
When I visited Dallas again after a long hiatus in 2012, I was surprised to see so many cameras at the intersections, especially on Preston Road and many six-lane streets. They were never there when I moved from Dallas to Colorado in 1996.
My friend who lives in Dallas explained that the traffic had gotten so bad on many six-lane streets, and people got more agressive lately. I could imagine because it took me much longer to get from point A to point B than before. I was often late because I underestimated the traffic.
“most of the egregiously bad driving behavior was done by young males (teens and young adults)… now, that’s not the case. An aggressive driver is just as likely to be a woman, or someone in their 40s or 50s”
Those 50 year old are the very same bad drivers you noticed decades ago. They are the ones who survived, that were able to afford expensive insurance and ticket consequences or somehow managed to avoid getting caught or in a wreck.
They taught their children to drive like them, too.
I do think that modern cars are less forgiving of drivers taking out aggression behind the wheel (which is overboosted to the point of numbness). Size, power (particularly low-end and at the first bit of accelerator pedal travel), the height-and-intimidating-styling arms race. And that’s even before distractions and electronic driver assists are layered on.
By comparison, the malaise-era small cars I grew up around all required *assertive* driving, with “armstrong” steering, manual everything, and what power there was really required winding the engine out to get to it. That gave space to allow *aggressive* driving without it being noticeable to other drivers.
Generally Ontario drivers seem a bit more considerate than Massachusetts drivers, but there are some exceptions:
As traffic volumes went down with the pandemic speeds increased, but particularly on the 400 (main route to Toronto from cottage country) on Sunday nights. Some guys weaving through traffic at 100+ mph, sportbikes screaming by flat out. You really have to take a long look back before changing lanes.
And around the university my son attends I feed less safe, there seem to be a lot of students in expensive cars driving indifferently or dangerously.
The last time Ontario had a photo radar ticketing system I was not in favour. Now I wish they’d bring it back, and also implement the Finnish system where fines are scaled to income.
Doug, I agree, excessive speeding in Ontario dramatically increases the risk of driving here.
However, speeding is almost universal. Any attempt to drive the speed limit creates a road hazard, a rolling roadblock as everyone tailgates and passes.
I’m happy to putter along in my vintage cars at the limit but I’m the only one it seems.
Ontario should consider increasing the artificially low speed limits on roads where it’s safe to do so. At present, safer driving- moving with traffic flow – requires one to break the law and speed most of the time. I’m all for enforcement but the current speed laws are universally rejected by average motorists ( who have no interest in driving dangerously) so they have lost all meaning.
Yup, we had to teach our kids that when they got their licences. Gotta keep up with traffic, I’d much rather one of them get a ticket than get flattened by a brodozer.
Speeding is not the problem, poor urban planning is!
City council of many major cities (Toronto, Mississauga) have lowered speed limits from 50 km/h to 40 (Yonge from Sheppard to Finch is just one of the examples) or even 30 km/h. Add proliferation of bike lanes, we’re not in Saigon where it’s +15 in January (try driving on Bloor St. West during rush hour when someone’s trying to make a turn in front of you) or not timed traffic lights (going Westbound on Hwy 7 towards Hwy 400 in the afternoon rush) when you are not going anywhere because vehicles in front of you can’t clear the intersection due to red light at the next one, when it’s green for you. All of that leads to aggressive behavior.
I spend my weekdays in traffic in a prehistoric 07 Sterling tanker 8×4 pulling a 8 wheel tanker trailer 17300kg empty 45000kg going back loaded pickups arent even at window height, I feel fairly safe,
I commute i a 03 C5 Citroen 5 star rating when new one piece high strength steel one piece side panels air bags all over the place inside pretensioner seatbelts yeah safe as.
Is this perhaps more of an East Coast thing? I haven’t noticed this issue here in the Seattle area, at least not to the extent described by the author and previous commenters.
Seconding that as a Seattle resident.
Portland has become truly apocalyptic on the road. Do you have large numbers
up there running no plates at all?
Never seen such anywhere I’ve lived (PA, RI, MO, CO, OR, CA, WA). Steve Jobs was famous for not getting license plates on his Rolls-Royce, but of course he’s now at the great computer company in the sky.
I asked about the no plates because that has become rather frequent
in Portland over the last year or so.
Could everyone be protesting, umm… something… rather than driving?
Third that as an Oregonian. The left lane on I-5 from the CA border to Portland runs almost perfectly at 75, which is ten over the limit. It’s very rare for someone to try to drive faster than that. I use cruise control religously.
We’ve been driving the 150 mile to and from Port Orford quite a bit, and it’s a bucolic drive, a bit of I-5 than two lane highways out to the coast and then 101 down the coast. Very relaxing drive.
According to the state website King Co was about flat as far as traffic fatalities were concerned comparing 2020 to 2019. However I’d say that drivers have become more aggressive in the past few years. As other have mentioned I’ve seen an increase in people running red lights, speeding excessively, passing in no passing zones ect. I can’t say that there is a lot of that but definitely more than it used to be.
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It’s been a couple decades since I drove in Boston, but it still ranks at the top of my “worst drivers” list, closely followed by pretty much anywhere in Alabama.
Any more, we avoid driving through large cities if at all possible. Not only because of the driving, but also the increased risk of road rage.
Not yet mentioned in either the post or comments is the fact that marijuana use was legalized in recent years. I wonder if there’s data on incidences of “Driving While Stoned?” I had high school and college friends that partook, and based on how I saw it change their demeanor, there’s no way I’d want them behind the wheel of a car, at any speed.
My best driving experience (as far as how other drivers behaved) was on the Autobahn in Germany, and mainly because other drivers were consistently predictable, even the ones in A9s doing 200+ KPH in the left lane.
Drivers are not paying attention to DRIVING the abuse of cell phones while driving is most likely the cause for the increases in accidents and this fake pandemic has people pissed off 24/7.
In my neck of the woods lack of enforcement of any sort has led to a generalized
breakdown of social norms. I won’t list the number of egregious activities my wife and I
have personally experienced/witnessed over the last couple of years, but they are legion.
Our response is that we are moving to rural America away from the chaos.
I got news for you. It’s chaotic out in the sticks, too – just a different kind of chaotic.
I have lived out in the sticks before, and will take that over what we deal with
currently. If you have been in the Portland metro area recently you will know
what I mean.
Interesting. When we lived in Oregon and went into Portland, traffic was busy but motorists were surprisingly calm. It was the Washington plates you had to watch for, far more aggressive. But that was a decade ago.
That’s still the current reality. It gets dense, but not intense. Drivers are quite calm and well behaved, as a norm.
I suspect Jon simply doesn’t like the density.
I have driven extensively in the Portland area for the last 7 years or so.
When we first arrived, it was as Petrichor states, busy but generally calm.
Over the last couple years drivers have become much more aggressive
and less considerate. I am sure there are a variety of factors at work here,
but I do believe that a near total lack of enforcement is one of them.
“Generations of Massachusetts drivers had been trained that right-of-way went to whoever could first enter an intersection. This gives rise to every changing green light being equivalent to the christmas tree at a drag strip. If there is a driver facing your direction, you are prepared for them to floor it and turn left in front of you. Most do. If they were to use a turn signal, then they’d lose the element of surprise.”
EXCUSE ME?
HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED THERE?
I’m not from Massachusetts but I have driven there enough to know what this is called – “a courtesy left”. New England roads are often one lane, so instead of holding up an entire lane of traffic behind a left turning driver, it is CUSTOMARY for the first left turning auto to go first, permitting the flow of traffic until another left turning driver comes to the intersection.
The reason this has been done for generations is because of COURTESY, which so many non-Mass drivers don’t get it and think that this is some kind of a terrible thing for left-turning drivers to do.
When you come to a light on a two-lane road, and you see a driver needing to turn left in the opposite direction, COURTESY SAYS TO LET THEM GO FIRST!
This is not a game. This is what I know to do and it works nicely, AS LONG AS DRIVERS PERMIT THE COURTESY.
Oh, yes, I do get it…and am usually quite happy to wave someone through if they’ve indicated their intentions. Because I’m not that guy who has to be first or whose time is automatically more valuable than anyone else’s.
Nevertheless, I do also believe that roads are engineered (even up here in rural New England) such that when drivers follow the rules, traffic flows at its smoothest.
And anyway, all of us know up here that it’s perfectly permissible to create your own lane to pass people on the right when driving around a left-hand turner. 🙂
One thing about the “courtesy left” is the string of cars that can then follow the turner in succession just inside his turning arc. My dad, a Boston native, referred to this as the Massachusetts Pick and Roll.
“the Massachusetts Pick and Roll”
Hahahaha – Love it!!
The courtesy left makes sense at smaller intersections without traffic signals. I was taught there to get yourself stick in the intersection, then clear with a left turn when the light turns red. That may be the only chance they’ll get to turn left before the end end of rush hour!
But when that’s done by several cars at a signalized intersection, that’s an abuse. Those drivers know that if they wait for the green arrow, they can safely turn left. When two or three pairs of left-turn laners take that “excuse me” left on green, it can delay lawful green light progress for a hundred drivers on the cross road. It’s piggish behavior, and I’ve seen it for decades.
I remember some of us “going a bit crazy” when the national speed limit got returned to 70 after those years at 55. But then things seemed to settle down a bit. Of late, though, the Aggressive Driving sure seems more widespread than a generation ago, on both surface streets and highways–I don’t quite see the 90mph interstate thing that friends on the coasts report, etc. Cars sure are quick nowadays! (Cars and trucks, that is.) I haven’t checked, but sense that 0-to-60 in my puny Ford Escape matches some muscle cars of my youth…
The greater height of vehicles and seating is an incentive to speed, too. A goo-cart at 30 feels faster than a car at 50, or a truck at 70. It’s about distance from the road, and how fast those yellow lines are rushing past.
I think cars are simply too powerful. The number of them across nearly all form factors that can hit 60 in 6-7 seconds is amazing, and it just doesn’t take much effort to rocket around at dangerous velocities. When 3200 lb cars had 120 hp with 4 wide-spaced gear ratios, it took a bit of work to get going and I think more people just went with the flow then.
The situations that worry me the most are not freeways with 90-100mph right lane bandits, though, but intersections in town. There, power is less of an issue because we’re talking 40-50mph velocities. But that’s more than enough to cause fatalities in a t-bone, even with the best modern safety features in today’s cars.
Some years ago I was on an Audi owners’ listserv, and someone posted to the effect of “my Audi’s performance is good but not great.”
Someone responded with, “For any given car, there are more powerful cars out there. Many cars these days have160 to 200 hp.” My cars have ranged from 55 hp (Fiat 128) to 135 hp (Saturn L200), so I could relate.
Good point. How much power do we need? How much power can a driver control? Conversely, try selling a vehicle with less power: “This is as much as you need…..”
You need power for overtaking safely on secondary roads. But how many folk regularly drive on such roads? You also need judgement which says, “This is not safe; don’t go”. How much power do you really need for city and freeway driving?
My first car would allegedly do 0-60 in 10 seconds, so the magazines said. There were times when it felt slow. Too slow; the accelerator was often floored. I made it faster. Maximum speed was never an issue; there was nowhere safe to try it. Nowadays it would be slow, beaten away from the lights by folk who weren’t trying. My last car could do 0-60 in the mid sevens. It had more power than I ever needed, even when towing; as it turned out, more than I could handle. Somewhere between those two would appear optimal.
“not to mention a 2 ton F-150 SuperCrew cab with at least 300HP”
As it turns out, 4000 lbs. is roughly the curb weight of the lightest possible F-150 config (a base regular cab/6.5′ 2WD truck with 3.3L V6). But it’s still got 290 HP, so it’s no slouch. The “most popular configuration” is probably a 2.7EB SuperCrew/5.5′ 4WD at over 4800, and 325 HP/400 lb-ft.
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely correct. I was just trying to give them a bit of the benefit of the doubt.
https://youtu.be/JMqVLVi1Zpk Great article! No one mentioned my favorite pet peeve; the left lane bandit! They merge on to the highway and immediately go into the left most lane. Cruising at 55, they are a rolling roadblock backing up traffic for miles! All too common in eastern Massachusetts!
I use the left lane for cruising because the other six lanes are usually for local traffic while my exit doesn’t come up for another several miles. Also – using the far left lane permits me an escape route of the shoulder if there is a sudden stop. I do not cruise in the left lane when the other lanes are open, but I do cruise along with the rest of the lane when the roads are crowded.
I hate people who tailgate me because I am not going 15 miles over the speed limit in the left lane. The left lane is NOT for speed bullies and being faster than me doesn’t mean you can physically threaten me with your Brodozer. I brake for tail gaters.
“The left lane is NOT for speed bullies…”
Ah contraire Monsieur.
Several police agencies have specifically declared that the left lane IS for fastest moving traffic, regardless of being over the limit. IL, I believe it was, gave a directive essentially: “we don’t care if he’s going 200 mph, if you’re holding him up in the left lane YOU will be the one ticketed.”
I don’t recall the exact wording but that was the punchline
I better submit my supporting documents before the judge slaps me around again. lol
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/parked-in-the-left-lane-illinois-state-police-want-to-give-you-a-120-surprise/
“Illinois Policy
Troopers are enforcing a state traffic statute that took effect in 2004. The law basically says to stay out of the left lane on interstate highways “except when overtaking and passing another vehicle.”
It also allows exceptions…
such as the mandate to move over for a disabled vehicle or when police have a driver stopped on the right shoulder – as in when they are issuing a driver a $120 ticket for violating the left-lane law. “
I wished that Maryland enforced this. There are plenty of signs that say, “Slower Traffic Keep Right”, however I’ve never seen an offending Prius pulled over for doing 55 in Lane One, when everyone else has to figure out how to get around the offending driver. THIS causes many an issue here in Maryland with traffic and accidents.
There was a post mentioning the Autobahn a few back (Shout out, Ed!). Everyone in Germany gets it. Why can’t we figure out this simple rule that slower traffic should keep right?
The pandemic’s increased speeds actually showed hope that people were starting to understand this simple concept. Yeah, that is quickly deteriorating again as more folks get back out on the road.
So to legally utilize one of the lanes on the freeway, you have to be at illegal speeds? No wonder more drivers are speeding.
Oklahoma (the state next door to me in which I travel frequently) has a brand new ‘impeding traffic in the left lane’ law. Time will tell if it helps, but in my experience, if someone ahead of me is going 5 or more below the limit, they have OK plates.
The problem with policing the left lane, Vanilla, is that everyone has a different standard of what an acceptable left lane speed is. The limit? +5? +10? The other commenters are correct: numerous state laws require you to move right.
“I brake for tail gaters”
Please don’t ever do that. You’re putting other people’s lives at risk if that brodozer pinballs you into the other lanes of traffic. I recently saw someone pull that ego stunt at 80 mph and it almost went very, very badly.
Addressing this issue, some years ago a spokesperson for the Washington State Patrol said, “If you want to regulate other people’s driving, we suggest that you apply to join the WSP.”
Good one!
lol
South Carolina enacted a “Move Right” law this year. Get caught blocking the left lane and you get hit with a whopping $25.00 fine. Yes folks, that is not a typo. A $25.00 fine. Sheesh.
It will cost more than $25.00 to process that $25.00 ticket.
As much as I can go on about left lane lollygaggers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtmKIWa4tY
this has been a long standing problem well before the pandemic. [Anecdotal observation of who is lollygagging at the posted speed limit in the wrong lane, seems to fall between obvious retirees acting oblivious or young women yakking on their cell phones]. As someone who does interstate driving (GA-SC-NC) at least once/month it hasn’t gotten any better. In fact there’s been an uptick in road reconstruction, and the problem is much worse on two lane highways because it seems tractor-trailer trucks are nearing pre-pandemic levels even though there is a need for even more truckers. Big trucks also take up a lot of left lane space because they’re getting around (sling-shotting?) around slower big rigs. I just wish they did this only on the downhill rather than attempting this going uphill.
I have to give a shout out to the Merritt Expressway in Eastern CT as the only place where people really got it about who is in the left lane and who should be in the right. Back in 2008-09 while romancing my future wife, she had to drive about 25 miles to White Plains airport to pick me up. Now J is a right lane driver through and through and really doesn’t deal with stressful road situations. But she had a 2007 Subaru Impreza which I still think was the most fun car I got to drive on a regular basis (her dad helped her pick it out). Peppy, agile and fast enough for the Merritt, I enjoyed it there because I was for the left lane. Key is just paying attention to your mirrors for charging cars and being ready to jump to the right at the first break to get out of the way. The Merritt was not straight and flat, but had curves and small rolls for hills and small shoulders, too. Local law enforcement usually stood at the side waiting for a crash but for all the weekends and the Monday Morning 500 towards NYC, no one was less than the posted limit in the right lane, never passed a crash, and no road rage other than flashing headlghts to move it or move aside. Unlike the highways down South where there is no rhyme or reason on speed in any lane, and seeing people slalom around big rigs and lolly-gaggers clogging the left two lanes was problematic. My wife still hates driving on the highway but was very tolerant of me driving to the insanity of the surrounding traffic.
I have excellent experience driving everywhere in the US. I’ve driven in every US state.
Aggressive driving is FINE in some parts of the US because there is more traffic than roads. If you need to get anywhere in Boston, Washington DC, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or San Francisco – and you are a defensive driver – be prepared to get shoved around and never arrive on time. I do not blame aggressive driving in these parts because there is just not enough road for all the traffic.
So – the WORST drivers are in cities where there is NO EXCUSE for aggressive driving.
1) DENVER – the most deadly reckless drivers ever. These people are used to aggressive driving on twisty deadly mountain roads, bumper-to-bumper, blinded by the sunrise of sunset, and their aggressive driving is simply inexcusable.
2) PHOENIX – where, like Florida, geriatric drivers with cataracts, meet drug runners with guns. 90 miles per hours meets 35 miles per hour. Where 95 year Oldsters meet 15 year Youngsters. The situation is explosive and out of control.
3) HOUSTON/CHICAGO – There are thousands of unlicensed, gun-toting, law-breakers using expressway shoulders to speed past grid-locked traffic and drive 60 while doing it.
There are really no reason for the aggressive driving we are witnessing on our roads today. (The exception I’ll make is for the older cities in the US Northeast, and SF) Today’s automobiles make drivers seem impervious to the elements and safer than they are. We can check auto insurance companies for details regarding accident rates and costs for more than anecdotal facts, but driving today could be safer but is more dangerous than ever.
I believe it would be fine to have computer programming that wouldn’t permit the speeds we see on our interstates. We have cameras covering our expressways – no reason there shouldn’t also be a way to prevent today’s computerized cars from going over 75 either.
There are quite a few roads in the western US where the speed limit is higher than 75mph.
We have more uninsured immigrants on our roads than ever. There is a language and cultural difference that is also adding problems. There are too many unlicensed drivers on the road. When they get into an accident, they flee. When they meet a problem, they speed. When they run over someone, they leave.
We need to give uninsured and unlicensed drivers the same treatment we give DUI drivers. This would be the only way we can get these people off the road.
We have more uninsured immigrants on our roads than ever.
Got any statistics to back that up, other than certain kinds of talk radio?
I can back it up in Indiana. In this state, if you are not a legal resident you cannot get a drivers license. It wasn’t terrible here through the 90s, but then someone busted up a fake license ring within our BMV and then licenses got really hard to get.
And without a license, insurance will not pay out here. Most policies contain an exclusion for operating a vehicle “without a reasonable belief that you have a legal right to do so” or something similar. Some sharp defense lawyer argued that if the driver lacks a license, how can he/she have a reasonable belief that he/she is legally entitled to drive? The Courts agreed (in a decision I don’t think was well reasoned). So there is no reason for one without a license to buy insurance here because you are just wasting your money.
Over the space of about 20 years I probably sued 2 or 3 thousand people over uninsured auto accidents. In my experience, whenever I saw an uninsured driver whose name/address suggested illegal immigration status from Mexico or parts south, I came to expect that one of two things would happen – either they would disappear and I would never be able to find them ever again, or they would contact me and would move heaven and earth to pay every last penny – and some of those obligations of folks who paid them off got into five figures.
Beyond just immigrants, the number of uninsureds gets higher in general. More and more people get suspended for a variety of reasons, and then just keep driving.
I’m quite aware of the fact that it’s an issue, and has been for decades. His point that I was specifically questioning is “more than ever”. Contrary to what many say or would have you believe, the number of unauthorized aliens in the US has been declining steadily since 2010. Any Google search on the subject will yield a number of results, such as this one I found that was covered at Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/03/10/illegal-immigration-in-america-has-continued-to-decline/?sh=2cf8aa984e14
In a report that could provide context to most immigration news stories, new research reveals that the number of unauthorized immigrants has continued to decline in the United States. The unauthorized immigrant population fell to 10,350,000 in 2019, a decline of 12% since 2010.
JPC, the implication of the claim above is that uninsured immigrants are a cause of feeling unsafe on the road. The fact that you can point to large numbers you have sued – and by a probably fair-enough inference, that there’s quite a few out there – doesn’t provide a meaningful context. That is, it really only reflects upon their illegal status and the effect that that then has upon their inability to obtain insurance in your State, which in turn means that they will inevitably have to be pursued personally. For insured drivers, it is all done between insurers, as of course they own those rights, and there is no need (indeed, no right) to pursue personally. Unless those cases end up in a fight in court, they’re not visible, and I will take a safe bet that collision claims in total vastly outnumber the “illegals” cases. It doesn’t reflect on illegal immigrants as a CAUSE of unsafe road behaviour. There is surely a strong incentive for such people to do anything but drive badly and draw attention.
Thank you for saying so well what I didn’t have the time to say. The issue of uninsured unauthorized alien drivers is one of those socio-political flash points. Yes, they have every incentive to stay below the radar. Obviously they are going to e involved in some accidents, whether at fault or not, and those cases get a lot of attention, especially by those that have strong feelings about the issue.
Sidestepping the politics of citizen vs. non-citizen, it is true that the proportion of foreign-born in the United States rose rapidly this century and is currently higher than any time in the past 100 years.
https://i2.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/201909_BrookingsMetro_Foreign-share-pop_Frey-02.png?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C9999px&ssl=1
I’m making no claims that those foreign born are better or worse drivers than native born, although through inference Wikipedia does list the number of road deaths per billion kilometers driven for a variety of countries, which is actually pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
You’ll likely find similar for many other industrialized countries as well, a simple consequence of it being easier to travel, relocate, and work in places other than those of one’s origin now (well, recently) than any other time in the past. Many companies actively seek out workers from other locales for various reasons, cost not necessarily being one of them.
You can be in this country quite legally and quite permanently without A) being born here and/or B) acquiring actual US citizenship. You can’t vote, you can’t serve on a jury, and you can’t run for president but you get to do everything else with a “green card” (Permanent Resident). You pay the same taxes, are subject to the same rules, and sometimes still get “special treatment” at US borders.
Going back to the original post in this thread, there are plenty (and probably even more?) unlicensed and uninsured US citizens on the roads than unlicensed and uninsured “immigrants”. I’d wager a lot of money that more than 99% of the people posting on this topic that reside in the US are directly descended from “immigrants” themselves, the majority of those within two generations from themselves The intended context by the poster of the term “immigrant” is offensive and pejorative.
As far as states not allowing “undocumented” residents from getting a driver’s license and thus insurance, that’s shortsighted and ends up slighting their own citizens precisely when something untoward does happen. Nobody ever considers that while “undocumented” as far as the licensing authorities are concerned, most “undocumented” residents that do work (most of them) do so with false (wink, nudge) paperwork that sees the government collecting untold sums in tax and social security etc deductions that, guess what, are never directly collected on by those that had them deducted and thus serves to prop up the rest of the system for the “documented” – i.e. free money for the kitty. If the US wanted to eliminate “undocumented” residents that are taking all the jobs legal residents don’t want or won’t do, all it would have to do is start to actually prosecute those that hire them. That does not happen for the above obvious reason amongst many others but could easily occur.
Totally with Paul on that one. Yes, there are more uninsured motorists on the road than ever before (see my response … with some citations … to Daniel up above). But to make the jump to say who those people are goes beyond any data that I’ve actually seen.
Radio?
Who listens to that anymore?
I have never heard evidence of this, and my admittedly anecdotal experience in an area with a huge immigrant population, many low income driving older cars, is that they are among the most careful and courteous drivers. They need to avoid trouble. It’s (again my anecdotally observations) texting drivers using adaptive cruise control in Tesla’s and expensive German cars, or young people in Korean cars or huge brodozers who seem to be the worst. But having driving in 25 or so states in the last few years, I also think it varies hugely regionally even within states.
I would echo your experience – those without licenses are often more careful than average, because criminal charges often follow if they get caught. Except for the habitual offenders, who tend to be rolling disaster zones, but those tend to not be immigrants, in my experience.
I have noticed a major increase in aggressive driving behavior in the D-FW area over the past two years as well, and this in a metro area that has long been known for its ferocious driving habits. As congestion increases with traffic returning to pre-pandemic levels, I am hopeful that people will be forced to slow down and obey traffic laws.
Street racing has run rampant in the evening hours, as otherwise smooth and quiet six-lane boulevards prove all too tempting after about 10 pm or so for too many drivers, particularly those of latter day muscle cars and trucks. Racing involves mostly men, but the age range apparently spans from teens to a few in their late 40s; a recent arrest involved a father-son team racing Dad’s Challenger Hellcat. Enforcement of traffic laws is spotty at best and apparently the police have trouble tracking most of the racers and flash mobs, who organize their competitions via social media.
Since I retired, I have noticed from traffic reports that crashes have occurred much more frequently on the route of my old nearly 100 mile round trip commute.
Fortunately, crashes were pretty non-existent at the times of my travels to and from work.
Now? I do my driving during either mid-late morning times or shortly after lunch. I always get home by 3 at the latest most of the time. When I am on the road, I leave more than enough room between myself and the car in front, and pretty much stay off the highways except for short jaunts.
In other words, I do my best to stay out of other drivers’ way!
This is fascinating reading. As a Toronto resident, I liked driving in the USA because I found American drivers to be more disciplined and courteous than Toronto. But it’s been many years, so perhaps things have changed.
My driving concern in Ontario is speeding. Our speed limits are artificially low, 49 mph for all 2 lane highways, and 63 mph for most freeways. But everyone speeds, a lot whenever traffic and weather allows. Driving the limit is hazardous as everyone blows past you. I drive at 10% over the limit and I’m usually the slowest vehicle on the road.
This makes law- abiding driving unsafe, as it blocks traffic and impedes smooth traffic flow.
Speed enforcement is relatively light in rural areas but our penalties are draconian. Very severe. You really do not want to be caught speeding in Ontario. So my Ontario driving is a game of chicken- speed to stay with traffic and risk a huge ticket, or drive the limit and continously get tailgated and passed, often unsafely by angry drivers.
I no longer let myself get too worked up anymore. I just pass when I can and get on with my life, whether it’s in the lane to their right, across a double yellow line, or in the centered two-way flex turning lanes once in a great while.
I’ll remain patient, mind my interval and bide my time. Show them any behavior out of the ordinary plodding-along behind or anything they feel is aggression, you either make a bad driver nervous, making things worse; or you risk tipping off a ‘Leaguer who will then try to thwart your pass.
Surprise sometimes is the best policy. Half of the time, once you pass them, they come to their senses and either speed up or get into a further right lane. Frequently enough, others behind you will follow your lead and pass in the same manner, “proper lane” usage be damned.
Driving in the Boston area sucks. The exits are close together making first lane travel awful. The second lane is as far over as commercial trucks are allowed so they use that to avoid the first lane. In lane 3 or 4, ignore the speed limit and go as fast as the traffic is moving. If you won’t do that, you are in the wrong lane. Move over. Oh don’t forget that breakdown lane traffic is allowed during rush hour on certain highways. It makes merging onto the highway a real challenge. There really is no “going for a nice drive” there anymore.
I agree that driving in Boston sucks. Your comment about driving on the shoulder during rush hour is something that I could not believe until I saw it for myself.
Coming back from Maine about 25 years ago (so it may be different now), I was coming down I-93 and got caught in Boston’s rush hour. When I saw these crazy fools using the shoulder as a lane, I could not believe my eyes. I found out later that it was LEGAL! Wow, just wow.
Oh, and one minor nit: Lane 1 is the FAST lane. So in your 4 lane example, the far right lane is Lane 4….
https://www.quora.com/How-are-highway-lanes-numbered-Which-is-lane-1
…that being said, what do they call the shoulder up there in Boston, Lane 4-1/2? ;o)
I agree that when they first started doing this (mostly on I-93 at first, but it’s expanded somewhat to other roads) about 10 years ago, I was aghast. I imagined mayhem, particularly when someone had to use the breakdown lane for, like, actually breaking down. But, somehow this works and we’ve gotten used to it and it doesn’t seem to cause accidents (just surprise on the part of out-of-towners and a “reduced” merging zone, which of course probably contributes to the need to put the pedal to the metal when entering the highway).
Then again, I learned to drive in DC…where entire roads shut down at certain times of day and carry just one-way traffic. (Yeah, I’m looking at you Rock Creek Parkway, Chain Bridge, Canal Road….) That used to scare the crap out of me when I was a new driver.
I don’t think the speeding and aggression aspect of driving is any worse than it was than when I got my drivers license 15 years ago honestly, any increase in accidents and fatalities I’m going to confidently attribute to the increase in inattentive driving by both speeders and non speeders. Driving an old cherished car I actually feel more safe on an interstate at 80 than on 4 lane surface streets puttering along at the speed limit in the right lane, where all too often someone decides to turn from a side street mere feet in front of me! I guess they don’t teach look BOTH ways anymore, just up down
The worst places I have driven include anywhere in the northeast/mid Atlantic (DC, Philly, NY, NJ in particular), Atlanta and Chicago.
It is not horrible in central Indiana, but there do seem to be more aggressive drivers than there used to be. The jump the light to turn left in front of traffic has become more common here where it used to be rare.
There seems to be more aggression of all kinds.
I feel less safe on the roads of 2021—on four wheels, on two wheels, or on two feet—than I did a quarter-century ago on the roads of 1996. There are a bunch of reasons:
• In 1996 I had a 20-year-old’s underdeveloped sense of risk and consequence; that part of the mind doesn’t fully develop and come online until one’s mid-20s. So naturally I felt much safer, because the risks and hazards just didn’t register.
• In 1996 I had a 20-year-old’s quick reflexes, keen eyesight, and long endurance, so I was better equipped to react to those hazards that got big enough and close enough to register.
• In 1996 nobody was misplacing their attention on a smartphone or being constantly distracted by an “infotainment” system in their car.
• In 1996 the trend of increasingly-long vehicle lifespan hadn’t yet so completely overtaken the short useful life of plastic headlamp lenses to grossly increase the pedestrian kill-count—detailed discussion of that is here.
• 1996 was before the trend toward poor sightlines due to towering head restraints blocking the view to the rear; bulky body pillars to comply with rollover roof crush standards, and smaller windows that make people feel safely swaddled inside the car.
• Traffic density was lower in 1996.
• In 1996, fewer places had been infected by bad driving behaviour, and I use that word deliberately. It takes only a very small number of rude drivers to demolish traffic courtesy. In one place I lived for a long number of years, there was a large influx of taxi drivers from places where manners aren’t a factor in behaviour on what passes for roads; places where the driving culture is dog-eat-dog, kill-or-be-killed, and do-whatever-you-can-get-away-with. Very quickly, everyone had to coarsen their behaviour or be run off the road.
I could probably go on and on with this list.
“How Safe Do you feel behind the wheel in 2021”
Interesting question to ask, as I largely gave up driving around the start of the pandemic. It wasn’t a gut-wrenching decision to toss away the keys. I’ve been nursing beaters on life support for over ten years, and have always made a point of living less than two miles from the job. To not have a car felt like a breath of fresh air. No more insurance payments, no more unwanted, expensive repairs.
To be perfectly fair, modern technology made this possible. Rejecting driving would not have been viable without the proliferation of modern ride-sharing services, which brought down the cost of livery services to an acceptable level. When I gave up driving, I lived in Jackson, MS, of all places. I wound up spending less on Uber than I did on insurance ($80/month). If I can make this work in Jackson, MS, it should be tenable in any quasi-urban municipality.
I now live in Athens, GA and work for UGA. My apartment is 0.7 miles from my office. Unlike Jackson, there is an extensive and reliable bus network, which I make prolific use of it to get to those places where my own two feet can’t carry me. Is it perfect? Is it as convenient as having your own personal vehicle? Of course not, but at the same time, it’s not a burdensome impediment. Main difference is one needs to plan in advance and manage your expectations. Travelling to an unfamiliar place? Study the routes. Weekly grocery run? If it doesn’t fit in the reusable bag, it stays in the store.
Becoming a pedestrian felt strange at first, watching cars from the outside looking in. One soon becomes adept at monitoring the actions of drivers, observing their facial movements, hand gestures, trying to equate action with intent. The results are inconclusive. I try to give cars a wide berth, but at least once a month there’s an incident. Cars running red lights, clipping intersections, distracted drivers playing with phones, or backing up without looking. I once had to jump out of the way of a Maxima where the driver reversed without even deigning to look behind him. When I finally caught his attention and admonished him for almost running me over, he had the audacity to suggest that the incident was my fault for being behind his car! This is the type of crap you have to deal with as a pedestrian in this day and age. I don’t feel entirely safe as a pedestrian.
That’s one view from the other side of the windshield. As for driving, I get behind the wheel of a university vehicle about once every eight weeks. This always feels strange at first. I find it takes about twenty minutes to get completely comfortable. For short, around town trips, I never quite relax. I don’t know how much of this is attributable to me, my relative inexperience, or the attitudes of other drivers I share the road with. I’ve witnessed firsthand many examples of poor driving etiquette outlined in the article above. We all have our own pet theories behind what is fueling the increase in vehicular aggression, as outlined in the comments above. I will say, there does seem to be a dehumanization stemming from our ability to isolate in technological echo chambers, everything from Reddit to Raptors. As a pedestrian, I often struggle to have drivers recognize my humanity.
As a corollary, there also seems to be a breakdown in respect for the civil institutions that help unite us and help set established social norms. Other posters have mentioned the problem of street racing that has become endemic throughout America. A quick search on YouTube reveals numerous videos of racers not only evading the cops, but blogging about it with no fear of retribution. Back when I lived in Mississippi, the street racers once shut down a section of Interstate 55. Please take a moment to let that sink in. How did we decline to the point where marauding gangs could temporarily hijack a federally funded highway?
“Are cars too powerful?”
Absolutely. On the few occasions when I pilot a vehicle, it’s usually a W-body Impala. 3.6 LFX with 302 hp. These mundane sedans not only have more power, but are far quicker than the high-end exotica I used to fantasize over as a car-obsessed child of the eighties. Wood it, and 60 is yours in a shade over six seconds. Top speed? Probably governed, but the old LS4 Impalas I used to peddle would nudge 154 when given the spurs. Regardless, the average car on the road now in 2021 has power in excess of any realistic demands.
Of course there will always be those who want ‘more’, just to play around with. Now that cars are so overpowered, the results are disastrous, as illustrated by any cursory YouTube search for Hellcats and ‘Vettes.
To paraphrase the title pic, our roads need not be a white line nightmare…
Thanks for this interesting take on the non-automotive lifestyle.
We walk a lot in town, and I am pretty careful at intersections. Pedestrians always have the right of way at any intersection here in Oregon, but one can never assume it’s going to be given. I tend to be fairly assertive in taking it, but careful too, just in case.
I recall that back in 1966 when I arrived in the San Fernando Valley. I went up to cross a street and everybody stopped for me. I was stunned but that how it was back then. Now if you assume that you have the right of way, like in 66, you could very well end up dead especially if more than one lane each direction and that is at a controlled crosswalk.
Yes. Nobody legitimately needs to hit 60 mph in six or seven seconds, let alone three. Nobody needs to be able to go 127 (or 107, or 97) miles an hour in a roadgoing vehicle—especially not with the near-zero effort and skill required by today’s point-and-shoot (point-and-click?) cars.
100% agree. My youthful self would disown me today, but HP to weight ratios
should be strictly regulated and reduced. And don’t get me started on the whole
lifted truck thing, they should be banned outright for on road use.
“And don’t get me started on the whole lifted truck thing, they should be banned outright for on road use.”
Agreed. If you’re following at a reasonable distance to see ahead or around them, someone cuts you off to get in front of you. If they’re following you, all you see is the grill ’cause they’re right on your butt. It’s visually the same as having a semi behind you.
I don’t want to go too far in the direction of fatuous forget-airbags-just-put-a-sharp-metal-spike-in-the-steering-wheel-hub-facing-rearward territory, but I wonder how much more courteous traffic would be if cars were markedly less powerful and harder to drive. Very good brakes, but nonpower steering, manual transmission, 0-60 not quicker than 13ish seconds.
Sounds like my 245.
Which will absolutely keep up with highway traffic, you just need to know what you’re doing…and be strategic.
And seriously, this is why I supported this car as the first car for a newly-minted driver. He needed to learn how to think about what he was doing in order to mix it up with traffic, versus having something that could blast past the thinking and simultaneously cocooned him from all foreseeable badness; and I was willing to let him accept the risk of getting nailed by someone while he was learning. Seems to have worked…at least in my/my kid’s case.
That’s an excellent example. Adequately fast, but it’s not quick to get there, so it requires thinking down the road, not just looking down the road. Very good brakes, very agile steeering, very good sightlines.
I wonder that too. Take a car, leave the crush zones, leave the air bags, detune the car to 70s standards, and detune the suspension and handling to 70s standards where you can feel that at 80 mph you are really pushing the envelope dangerously so. I’m just dreaming…
I’d say leave all the safety engineering including the suspension and handling and brakes—just make the car “harder” to drive and slower to accelerate, and limit its top speed.
You covered a point before I could, Mr. Stern. It’s not just powerful and quick, but also they are better engineered to go fast, and to a lesser extent so are the roads.
During my college years (Carter – Reagan) a friend of mine said, lets go to the Stone Mtn Freeway in his 1978 Firebird. And there he pulled over and said, you drive. So I did. Fastest car before this one was my grandmothers 1969 Olds 98 on bias ply and it was bouncy and unsteady once over 90 unless the road was flat and smooth. SMF was flat but not smooth and I couldn’t bring it to 100 mph without that feeling the next little bump would make me air-borne because it had shocks that were just too bouncy. My 1982 Toyota couldn’t do 90 unless there was a tailwind, and it was straining to do so.
First car that could do 90 reasonably well was my leased 1997 Honda Accord I4/manual 5. A decent highway car but attracted a lot of tickets for me. Those were my MA/NY years.
Now I have a 2010 Toyota Venza V6 “only” 268 hp and that can go up to 90 mph without me trying or noticing. Very stable on the road even at 100 with minimal effort. It doesn’t take much effort to exceed even local road speed limits in today’s cars. Thus the proliferation of speed bumps, round-abouts and other calming methods like street narrowing which are marginally effective.
We’ve improved vehicle engineering and safety, yet driver awareness, skill and safety hasn’t evolved like the vehicles have. I suppose in time when automated vehicles take over this will be rendered mostly moot. But Skynet isn’t here … yet.
I’d say “lesser extent” is massively understating the case. Large amounts of roadway in America are old, long overdue for replacement, and in poor repair.
I was a habitual speeder before I retired. I was respectful, not cutting people off, no speeding in residential areas, etc. I would run 10-15 over the limit on the interstate. 10 over on two lane roads.
The pandemic sure changed that. I get blown by almost every time I’m out on the road. Even tho I’m still running 5-10 over the limit.
Part of the problem in my locale is there isn’t any law enforcement present. Its one of the reasons I was never particularly worried about speeding where I live. There isn’t anyone out there enforcing the speed limit.
It also doesn’t help that the speed limits are low to begin with. Freeway sections limited to 45 mph for political reasons. Outstate roads were 65 day time-55 night time before the 55 mph limit. The state JUST started raising these limits to 60 mph two years ago. The vast majority were driving over the limit so we become conditioned to running what you feel safe running.
It is much more congested in Northwest Indiana than 10 or 20 years ago and it shows in people’s frustration while driving.
On my commute I find if I stay in the right lane and go with the slow flow and let the rest rush to fill every gap like piglets to a teat, I am less stressed and we all meet up together at the first stop light anyway. They go through a lot of hassle to get that extra 1 or 2 car lengths.
Here in Oklahoma it has gone beyond aggressive to down right blatant recklessness. Part of the problem is that drivers education is not taught in schools any more. It has been turned into a for profit operation that runs as many kids through in as little time as possible with the bare minimum of knowledge and skill. Also, over the last 10-15 years there has been a large increase in folks moving here from other states and they are bringing their bad habits with them. High horsepower vehicles so readily available and in the hands of so many unskilled drivers is another problem, along with the blatant disregard for basic traffic laws.
More and more people are just making up their own rules as they apply only to their own selfish desires. And somewhere along the line has come this boneheaded idea that the same rules that apply on the interstate or controlled access highways also apply on city surface streets, so someone driving the speed limit or slightly under in the #1 lane on a 4 lane city street is tailgated, honked at, flipped off and told to get in the right hand lane. It’s a head shaker.
Because it doesn’t work. See the YouTube link in my comment further up the thread.
If it didn’t work then, it works even less now. Very good video though. He did touch on the fact that after driver ed was pulled from schools there were those who pushed and were successful at keep it going, which would culminate into the privatized industry we see now, which I do believe made it next to worthless. At least back in the day were were a taught about the relationship between cars, trucks and motorcycles, weight, steering, braking distances & why trucks can’t stop like cars do, etc. Kids now days don’t have a clue.
I refuse to ride a motorcycle now. Period. Between the cars who pull out in front of you or the cars who are on your tail without the driver having a hint of realizing how much sooner you can stop than they can, it’s not worth it.
Drivingwise, my gf chides me for driving more aggressively than she does, but she’s the one who stops at the Texas border and hands me the keys, because the driving environment there is overwhelming for her. But having her eyes in the passenger seat has made trips there safer.
I mostly used the light rail and bus system to get around Portland because I got to my destination sooner and didn’t spend time finding a place to park. It was at most a quarter mile walk to my destination, too. At night, I’d drive and park if I planned to be out later than the last bus.
TIL a new term: Overton window. Knowledge like this is why I love this site.
In my lifetime we’ve achieved a shift in the window as regards drink driving. That didn’t come without a battle, but it’s no longer the problem it used to be. Not in Australia, anyway. Think of all the other attitudinal changes society has achieved in your lifetime.
But driving behaviour? I suspect we’d be charging headlong into a psychological minefield there. Some people just flat out should not be behind the wheel, but trying to find a socially-acceptable and legally-enforceable way to yank their licence and keep them from driving unlicensed – that might be nigh-on impossible.
There are those who are easily distracted. Those who are medically unfit. Those who can’t judge the speed of an approaching vehicle. Those who persist in fiddling with hand-held phones. Those who can’t resist any challenge, however stupid. Those who have little concept of the dynamic abilities of their vehicle. Those who can just barely control their vehicle under ideal circumstances. Those who don’t keep up with changes in the law. Those whose abilities are befuddled by medication (you can’t always tell ‘from the inside’). The list goes on.
Somehow we need to change that mindset that driving is an inalienable right. We need to get people to accept that there are valid reasons to yank someone’s licence. We need people to accept that it might happen to them. And once yanked, there needs to be a viable transportation alternative – that might be an even bigger issue. A bus three times a day (like from my town) is not a viable replacement.
These days everyone is their own expert, it seems. Focussing on speed enforcement has undermined police credibility, and government credibility on matters pertaining to road safety. What authority is left that people can trust? It’s not just a matter of making the test harder (good idea though it is; we’ve done that) or making losing the licence easier (good idea, so long as a smart lawyer doesn’t get the culprit off). And once the licence is lost, we need to keep the culprit off the roads; there’s the rub. Custody is not the answer.
Retesting is all very well, but people will be on their best behaviour for the test. Didn’t we all do that to get our licence in the first place? Additional driver training is not the answer; I’ve overheard offenders joking and bragging about doing the course. Give the right answer to achieve the desired result, then business as usual for them. Some people just plain don’t learn. As though life is a game; press the reset button and play again. Only it’s not like that.
I sense the size of the problem, probably only dimly, but I don’t have an answer.
“Focussing on speed enforcement has undermined police credibility…”
Exactly!
The present enforcement plan seems like an irrelevant joke. Cops directed to lurk in hiding monitoring speed on wide open roadways. It’s as if their directives are to solve 1963’s most pressing traffic problem. Oh, and to bring in some easy cash too.
Meanwhile, back at the Thunderdome… lol
I have had so many instances where I’ve gone “where is a cop when you need one”. Back in the summer there was a car zipping lane to lane to get ahead and eventually drove in the opposing lanes of traffic for an eighth mile before turning left. Actual reckless behavior, how often are these types of drivers actually get caught in the act doing something like that?
“Speed was a factor” is a statement I often see parroted by the police representatives in fatal crash investigations, but I suspect it’s more likely the veering into the other lane not paying attention may have been a more important detail to share, but if you report to the public it’s “speed kills” then they to continue justifying sitting behind billboards eating doughnuts while actually doing nothing substantive and hands on about traffic safety.
My son has discovered that if you ring the police to report that behaviour on a major intercity freeway, they really scramble. Several times he’s done that (Australia), always with quick results.
A docent on the Hornet commutes from Millbrae to Alameda every Saturday morning at 8:30 across the San Mateo Bridge. Apparently the 7 mile long bridge has become a raceway now. He drives his 300Z at around 70 mph which is a tad over. He gets passed by cars doing 90-100 mph on the three lane east bound side. He was passed by a reckless one doing that speed last weekend. About 15 minutes later he is now heading north of 880 (did I mention I hate 880) and there is a long backup. When he finally gets to the cause it is the guy doing 95 on the bridge. His car is smashed front and back. A van is smashed front and back with the driver on the shoulder head in his hands. The CHP officer is looking into the high speed car as the driver is still trapped inside. One could only hope…
I lived in NY state for 8 years with no issues. Drove extensively in Pennsylvania and no issues.
I currently live in the Deep South and distracted drivers (ie: texting on the cell phone) are causing nasty accidents with vehicles crossing the center line . A new phenomena is Interstate gun battles during rush hour.
The absolute worse state is FLORIDA. Have never seen such aggressive driving, brake checking, gun battles, distracted drivers (sitting at a green light for 10+ seconds till I blow the horn), and blind spots due to jacked up pick-ups. And don’t blame the Snowbirds, they’re the only ones using their turn signals.
NHTSA estimates that 8,730 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the first three months of 2021, a 10.5% increase from the 7,900 fatalities the agency projected for the first quarter of 2020.
These increases in fatalities come even as driving declined; preliminary data reported by the Federal Highway Administration show that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the first three months of 2021 decreased by 2.1%, or about 14.9 billion miles.
also: Early Estimates of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities
and Fatality Rate by Sub-Categories in 2020
I developed a habit of driving with a thumb on the horn within city limits. At least once a week I avoid a near collision due to other’s ignorance, stupidity or sense of entitlement. Not that I am perfect but I had proper instruction and 40+ years of driving. I was once 18, 10ft tall and bulletproof so there is some sketchy stuff in my past.
I don’t even park on the street in my neighbourhood except to shuffle the deck in the driveway. There’s a few driver training cars that regularly wander these streets to practice parallel parking and 3-point turns. They are not big name drivers ed schools either so they rub and run and bump and run.
It’s not even safe to walk. These side streets have 4 way stops and stop signs every other block. It gets so bad that almost no-one comes to a complete stop anymore and they hardly ever look for cross traffic or pedestrians.
Lots of good stuff here; CC is so much better than reading the drivel in Car & Driver, etc. Not too many calling for more driver’s ed or advanced training for example, because as Daniel Stern and my former boss at IIHS, Brian O’Neill have stated, it doesn’t work. Attitude trumps knowledge. Even kindergartners know that red means stop, but too many drivers choose to deliberately run red lights and roll through stop signs.
I retired at the same time the pandemic started, so there’s no more commuting, and my wife and I have taken only 3 road trips in the interim — 2 from our home in central VA to Pittsburgh and 1 to the beach on the Eastern Shore of VA.
It’s frustrating when the 4-lane rural interstates (2 lanes in each direction) get busy, but not bogged down, because the fast lane is nose-to-tail with vehicles trying to go 80 mph, 10 above the speed limit in VA and the PA Turnpike. If I go 70 in the slow lane, I can maintain a lot more headway in front of me, but it gets dicey when I come up on a tractor-trailer going 65; and I have to wait a LOOOONG time before I can find a gap in the left lane.
Locally, I avoid the main arterial 6-lane road posted at 45 mph — it’s become a raceway. We choose to travel instead on a new parallel parkway, 2 lanes only, but posted at the same limit. Far less traffic, and with no passing allowed, it’s a lot more relaxing.
The 3 lanes of I-95 are scary because the middle lane is usually the slow lane. Terrible lane discipline. We take I-81 now both ways on our trips to Yankeeland since my aunt in Towson died. It’s 50 miles longer but less nerve-racking.
I know what you mean about I-95. People going below the speed limit use the middle lane, which forces tractor-trailers to go around them in the right lane, because trucks aren’t allowed in the left lane.
I used to live in Toronto and I found the traffic congestion annoying but not really scary. Like any large city there were lots of aggressive drivers but in city traffic you are probably only going to get a dented car. Since I retired we have moved to a rural area. Overall people are less aggressive but there is a significant amount of dangerous passing on the 2 lane highways.
Another recent development, since the start of the pandemic, is basically street racing. I live on the Bruce Peninsula, which sticks up into Lake Huron and has a ferry running from its tip at Tobermory. The only highway is not usually busy except in the summer twice a day, when a ferry is arriving or leaving. For some reason this highway is now popular with these racers. It has a limit of 80 kph, so the normal speed is 95, but several people have been picked up for over 200kph. This obviously leads to unsafe passing and several really serious accidents. It means I avoid this road during the summer tourist season.
These last 2 years have been puzzling in terms of fatalities on US roads. Generally during downturns in the business cycle (recessions), both the absolute number of deaths and the number of deaths per capita decrease, often quite sharply. This can be seen in the attached, which covers the years 1975, when a comprehensive census of fatalites was begun by NHTSA, through 2019.
There were dramatic drops in the early 1980s (Reagan recession), early 1990s (GHW Bush recession), and especially in the late aughts (Great Recession). Deaths reached a low of 32,479 in 2011 (the lowest IIRC since WWII), and the death rate per 100,000 people was lowest in 2014 at 10.3.
But this pandemic produced a very different type of recession, where the stock market initially tanked but reached record highs just a couple of weeks ago, people have ample opportunities for employment but are not taking advantage, and inflation is surging. So too, fatalities on our highways are surging as well — we’ll need some careful analysis to figure out why.
Cell phones, touch screens, hot coffee and two donuts from the drive through window. It doesn’t make sense that fatalities would be going up????
I imagine some police don’t want to risk being chauvinated. The murder rate is way up, too.
Chauvin deserves what he’s getting. Don’t murder someone after you arrest them.
As a whole, I don’t feel too uncomfortable behind the wheel under most driving conditions in my area, and I don’t drive a particularly safe vehicle (1986 full size GM pickup) by modern standards.
Traffic here in Tucson, Arizona tends to skew a bit toward the slow side, with all lanes on the freeway occupied by vehicles moving at or a bit below the speed limit much of the time. There are quite a few drivers who appear to be operating in zombie mode, but I find that I can usually keep enough distance between my vehicle and theirs to safely react to any untoward movements. It’s not *always* possible, but by and large, I’ve usually got an “out”… This is often facilitated by roads that are less densely packed with traffic, not quite as many aggressive drivers as in some areas, roads with shallow ditches and few obstacles (medians are often this way too). Often being able to travel during off-peak hours is helpful on this front, too.
My most recent close call was on a two lane secondary road last summer. There was an oncoming vehicle stopped at an intersection with front wheels turning left and their left turn signal on. Right as I was approaching the intersection at a bit over 45mph, they quickly started turning left into my path. Another vehicle that was at the stop sign to my right, was far enough back that I had room to quickly maneuver right and out of the path of the oncoming dingus. I had to almost depart the asphalt completely, but was able to quickly steer back up on the road without much drama, also avoiding a cluster of mailboxes. Looking in the rearview and through the dust kicked up, I could see the vehicle that had made the error frozen in a position blocking 3/4 of the lane I had occupied a few seconds earlier. I hope the driver pooped their pants a little, and am thankful that these things don’t happen too often… and that it was in a place where I was able to take action and avoid a collision.
First driving at those ridiculous high speeds in commute traffic never ever gets you anywhere faster than the other guy at a more normal speed. I’m amazed at how many humans can’t figure that one out but then many humans can’t figure out physics either.
Generally I drive the number 3 lane from the center in California at 65 mph the posted limit. I leave the number 1 and 2 lanes to the nuts and there are tons nowadays as the speeds have dramatically escalated since Covid hit. In the late afternoon commute the average speed is about 20 mph for around four miles and if everyone dd that they would move faster than the typical stop and start. I drive a stick and make it a point to never use my brakes but only 1st and 2nd gear for the entire distance. Am pretty damn good at it.
I also notice people now signal to change lanes but don’t look to see if safe anymore.. They just change and expect you to make it safe for them. One fellow pulled out in front of me making his right turn and clearly misjudged my speed and distance from him. It was hit the brakes, hope to not hit his rear, but being about one Focus car length away that wasn’t going to happen, Since I was trained long ago to use speed and maneuvering for these situations I quickly went around to the left between him and the oncoming lane making a left turn across the line. Piece of cake with inches to spare. He got irate even though I saved his ass. Roared up behind me and thought I could shake him at my left turn by waiting to the last second. But no he swerved over to stay behind at the light and then started to point his finger at me and imitate shooting me. However, I pulled into a middle school parking lot were he tried to follow but realized he would end up in a line to pick up kids and went into the teachers lot to wait. He had a long wait and eventually left. This current behavior from a mid-40s fellow is common place around here now.
So do I feel safe? If I am in control of the car, both hands on the wheel, stereo on in the background for concentration, and no distractions from anything else then I would say yes. However, I no longer feel safe as a passenger anymore and it would be impossible for me to sit still in a car with another driver for long. Last weekend we drove to Las Vegas which was 9 hours down. Back on the Sunday after Thanksgiving was the drive from hell as it took 12 hours. I drove both legs and had my wife stay as passenger. Plus I stay off certain freeways because they are always trouble from high speeds to shootings. The classic being 880 through Oakland-Union City.
My biggest take away from the last two years is that a lot of people, on the highways especially, don’t care about anyone else’s safety today including their own.
Wiki has the fatality rate for countries, and I’ll refer here to deaths per 100,000 cars. It’s not up to date, but it suggests strongly that the US had quite a problem before any pandemic. (Before anyone leaps in, I’m not intending some bag-the-Yanks rubbish here: I’d hardly bother reading this site if that was my mentality). Western European countries all sit between 4-5 per 100K up to a bit over 8 per 100K in France. Go east on that continent and it rises dramatically to 14 or more. For refence, Australia was on 7.4, and perhaps more relevantly for US-style driving conditions, Canada sat on 8.9.
America, as of 2018, sat on 14.2.
I can’t pretend to know any real answers here (there are plenty of excellent ones above), but I can relay the Australian experience, though it will be startlingly foreign to US readers. Here, enforcement of speeding is completely draconian, and I do mean just that. Hold on to your hats.
You won’t get a ticket if only 1.8 mph over the limit, but you will at 2.4 mph. That will cost 1 demerit point, and $227. By 6.8 mph over, it will be 3 demerits and $363. Past 15.4 mph, it’s $500 and licence lost for three months. The highest freeway limit in nearly all places is 62mph: in those zones, if you do more than 12.4mph over, you will pay $363 and lose your licence for three months. There are cameras everywhere, including red light AND speed cameras at nearly all big intersections. All police cars have mobile cameras, radar and laser. There are many hundreds of mobile cameras, moved and hidden daily.
No-one with half a brain speeds. Any court in the land will quickly tell you that a licence is not a right, but a privilege. And if you end up in a court, which you will if you do, say, 50 mph over, you can face jail. If you have more than .05% alcohol BAC, you will pay boatloads, lose your licence for three months, AND have to fit an interlock for a year. Repeat offenders get much worse.
Does all this work?
Well, Aussies are, to be frank, shithouse drivers. Aggressive, incompetent, you name it. Much of the crap behaviour mentioned above goes on here too (minus any threat of guns). It’s all got a bit worse since the pandemic, and standards were declining before that due to the idiotic amount of distraction new cars provide within.
But our death and injury rate falls every year. Drink-driving, by virtue of a long and clever 20-year campaign – and ever stricter enforcement – has become a social ill, rather the bit-of-a-boast it used to be (ie: you’re considered a total dick if you do).
Having given all that context, I do feel less safe driving in 2021, which I reckon is a reflection of societal forces unleashed about 5 years or so ago, when any sense of rectitude or responsibility for others was fractured. Social media whipped this into further divisions, for the sake of nothing but huge money. The same selfishness spills on to the roads. Worse, I try not to react, but it can be impossible at times, as it seeps in: very rarely, I’m shamefully no better.
A lot of the enforcement mentioned here couldn’t be done in America, for reasons inherent to her legal being. It would be resisted successfully if tried. But I do wonder if doing at least the some of it that IS possible might help the worst of what’s described above. It won’t get rid of idiots, or indeed, change the course (of coarse) we all seem hell-bent on in the “West”, but it might at least help relieve the road stress for the vast majority of us who ARE decent humans beings.
Deaths per billion km traveled is much more relevant, although Wikipedia only has data on 20 or so countries for that stat. Lots of Americans have two or three cars but only drive one at a time. Ten of those countries, worst first:
Mexico 27.5
South Korea 13.8
Czech Republic 11.5
Hong Kong 8.1
Belgium 7.3
United States 7.3
New Zealand 7.2
Slovenia 7.0
Japan 6.4
Israel 5.9
That’s quite correct, and interestingly enough for such a big country, Australians do a good deal less average yearly miles than Americans are wont to do. The US average appears to be as much as 30% higher.
Nevertheless, the US population is about 13 times Oz. In 2017, there were 1200-odd killed on the roads here, which if it equated exactly, would be about 15,000 in America, and increased by 30%, that’s a bit under 20,000. In reality, in America, there were 37,000-odd, or getting towards double. When one considers Australia’s crowded cities and their relatively crap road conditions, the vast miles of unpaved roads, the 45 million population of small-brained roadside kangaroos, the reality of essentially no divided roads outside 100 miles of the cities and balance those risks against the really harsh winter driving considerations in a whole bunch of the US, it still means the US figure seems noticeably bad.
Which of course doesn’t mean hyper-enforcement is some cure-all, but it appears to have some role.
I noticed that the United States is in between Belgium and New Zealand. Bad is subjective, as the majority of drivers in those countries probably don’t perceive it as such and continue to drive their cars.
And within Australia, the state of Victoria is known to be particularly draconian. On the main highway between Sydney and Melbourne (dual carriageway, 110 km/h limit), 7-10 km/h over the limit in NSW seems acceptable. Once you cross the border into Victoria, everyone slows down a bit.
I’ve driven a bit in Australia and I found that the speed limits were set reasonably high. Here in Ontario the limits are set low and 15 km.hr over is the norm. The city I live in stated that they set some areas at 35, knowing that everyone will go 50 which is what they actually want.
Despite this Draconian enforcement, the Cato institute ranked Australia just ahead of Canada (#5 and 6 respectively) in 2020. America tied with the UK at 17th.
There are a few key factors that explain the issue of higher US road deaths. But here are by far the most significant ones:
49% of fatalities were not wearing seat belts (!)
28% involved alcohol (!)
There’s still a very significant issue of extremely risky behavior among a certain set of drivers, as these two stats show. If these two were eliminated, US road deaths would be much more similar to AUS and EU.
The other key factor is history: In Europe driving was historically seen as a luxury, and treated (and taxed) as such. The current cost to get a driver’s license in Germany is between $2300 and $3700. The whole issue of driving is taken very seriously; it’s a bit more like getting (and keeping) a pilot’s license in the US.
In the US, ever since the Model T, driving is seen as a right, not a privilege (even though legally it’s not). The public transit infrastructure is simply lacking in much of the country, and/or there’s a strong bias against using it among a large segment of the population, because these folks are concerned about their image. BTW, it occurs to me that perhaps part of the increase in traffic fatalities might be linked to the precipitous drop in transit use by those that still needed to get to work and such.
Americans have historically had a very lax attitude to driving, since the essentially grew up with it, and it was a given that everyone would drive, sooner than later. In Iowa, when I lived there in the 1960s, kids as young as 14, possibly 12 were allowed to drive themselves (and other kids) to school if they lived in the country.
The very relaxed and entitled attitude to driving is deeply entrenched in the American psyche, and I don’t see how that’s going to be changed readily. Americans do not like to be policed excessively, especially for doing what they do not see to be something that is a social harm, at least in an obvious way.It’s just a fact of life here, like certain other things, like guns.
We regularly drive on interstate highways (I-81 and Pennsylvania Turnpike), and this past summer we drove from Pennsylvania to South Dakota and back (trip to Mount Rushmore).
The problem in this area is tractor trailers, due to the proliferation of warehouses along the I-81 corridor. I-81 needs to be expanded to three lanes each way to handle the truck traffic, which has made driving on that particular highway unpleasant. But this was happening long before the pandemic.
On the Turnpike, tolls have been skyrocketing, thanks to Act 44 of 2007, which requires the Turnpike to divert a portion of its toll revenue to the state’s mass transit systems, including Philadelphia’s SEPTA and the Pittsburgh Port Authority. The Turnpike Commission claims that traffic is not down, but it doesn’t seem that way.
The result is that driving on the Turnpike has been much more pleasant. Traffic, except for the occasional tractor trailer, moves at 75-80 mph, and there aren’t many left-lane campers. Every now and then someone will cruise by 85 mph. But I haven’t noticed any uptick in tailgating or aggressive driving. It may be different in the Philadelphia region, as the Turnpike skirts the northern Philadelphia suburbs, and is used by many suburbanites for their daily commute.
The trip to South Dakota was pleasant. In South Dakota, the speed limit is 80 mph, and virtually everyone was driving 80-85 mph. No left-lane campers, but not too many people exceeding the limit.
As for Massachusetts drivers – they have long had a bad reputation even in this area for aggressive tailgating, lane changes, etc. I-81 has been used by Massachusetts drivers heading south for decades, so this has long predated the pandemic.
Regarding the increased performance of today’s vehicles – I can remember the bad old days of 0-60 mph in 15 seconds for the average family car during the late 1970s and 1980s. I’ll take 0-60 mph in seven seconds any day, particularly with many of our short entrance ramps for urban highways.
“How Safe Do You Feel Behind the Wheel in 2021?”
Well honestly, I’m not sure. While I do feel like the quality on how people manage their patience and courtesy has taken a complete nose-dive this year, I haven’t noticed too much of a difference from last year. Other than the normal cases of not using a blinker, last moment decisions, and the general aggressive driver.
However, I have seen an increase in plain stupid behavior. Such as insane speeding on smaller roads rather than the highways, crazy stunts, and people choosing to completely stop in the middle of a highway or intersection just because of a minor issue. Like c’mon dude, doing that is dangerous and it causes accidents, please stop.
So, while I know that I’m a good enough driver to keep myself from getting into an accident, it’s other people I don’t trust. Car accidents will most likely always happen as long as the idea of driving exists, and it’s part of the risk you take when driving. But what you can do is be a more alert, concentrated driver to lower the risk you’re normally taking, so you’ll lower the chances of getting into an accident yourself.
There’s no difference around here. I find it surprising that there’s differences in driving reported elsewhere.
Much ado about NOTHING, as far as I’m concerned.
I suspect that this is another Lyin’ Mass Media tactic to keep us scared and dependent on More Government.
Just ’cause you don’t see it means it’s a lie, then? I guess your experience trumps everyone else’s post here, doesn’t it?
“Just ’cause you don’t see it means it’s a lie, then?”
It’s a lie around here. Nothing changed. It’s not better, it’s not worse. It’s not a bit different from two or three or five years ago. The trajectory for traffic congestion is exactly the same as it was–getting worse due to Government interference (“traffic calming”) but not getting worse due to anything the driver’s are doing differently, other than reacting as predicted to the “traffic calming” debacle.
“I guess your experience trumps everyone else’s post here, doesn’t it?”
It does for me, here. I’ll trust my own experience over someone else’s report.
In Minnesota the best way to describe how drivers have evolved is that they’ve become more derpy. From taking 10 years to get up to speed on an on-ramp to plugging up the left lane, it annoys me more than makes me feel unsafe. Now with winter upon is once again, the overly cautious and seasonal amnesiacs are converging to make for some code brown excitement.
My car verges on being too powerful, and I primarily use that power to get the cluck out of Dodge, regularly having to shoot past somebody who is merging at 35 mph while a semi approaches at 70. Otherwise, I tend to take VanillaDude’s tac and bide my time until I can maneuver to a better location.
I was actually born in Massachusetts, but haven’t spent that much time there, though my cousins still live there (moved there long after I was born); moved back for my first job out of college but only spent 3 years there. I live 1900 miles away now and seldom get back, so much so that I had to study the maps of the roads; though I knew them pretty well almost 40 years ago, some have changed (hadn’t been back since before the “big dig” for instance in Boston). I’m also a bit of a laggard in buying technology (I worked in the field but wasn’t enamored with needing to buy latest for my own use) and still owned a “flip phone” without GPS back then; so I convinced myself to move up several classes in rental car to get one with navigation since I didn’t want to get lost and have to figure out how to get there.
I’m retired now; and my driving style has correspondingly changed….though it actually started maybe a decade before I actually retired, I’m one of the laggards who hugs the slow lane. I’ve been in the same city for 40 years now, and the traffic is much worse (though it was a city back then, there are 10x the number of people living here compared to then…so the roads have really never caught up). People here drive very aggressively, not sure how it compares to Massachusetts, but the roads are generally more modern here (since they were built later, to different standards), but people are really impatient and drive that way. What I remember about the roads back east (maybe more so in Pennsylvania where my parents are from but also Massachusetts) are all the smaller roads which really are main thoroughfares even if they are narrow and winding (but people still drive pretty fast on them). Here there seem to be more primary roads (a lot of them tolled, even though they were built as non-toll roads originally) but people have no compunction about weaving in traffic, including the slow lane, and I often have someone up my bumper who is trying to avoid a slowdown in the outer “fast” lane.
Once I saw a super agressive driver hit the back of another car (in the middle lane) such that he actually flattened to two rear tires on that car (making it lose directional control) and despite the damage to his car swerve around further to get away from the damage he caused….and this was on the frontage rather than main road (multiple lane frontage road). It is scary to realize not only are there drivers like that but they aren’t all that unusual, such that if you’re in the wrong place at a given time despite how careful a driver you are you can still be in such an accident. That’s what gives me pause, knowing how life changing an accident can be, but doesn’t seem like some people credit it (or care). Sharing the road, realizing that other drivers are likewise paying taxes to use it and even though they’re “in the way” they are only trying to do the same thing as you and get somewhere. People like to think they’re like “cowboys” but at times we’d be better to remember that behaving like “ants” is more appropriate for conditions.