Everyone's a homer and wants bragging rights over the worst traffic, the worst drivers, the worst commute.
I haven't been
everywhere, but I've moved from one end of this country to another and was a road warrior for a number of years back when I was attached to a sales office. So I've seen drivers from Seattle to SoCal to Miami to New England, and all sorts of places between. And, to boot, I don't have much in the way of homerism, since I've never lived in any one place for more than a quarter of my life. (I haven't been to Alaska or Hawaii or the colonies.) And I will say. . . man, every place has bad drivers. I got stories about pretty much every place I've been.
So while this isn't scientific, I'd say the winner is. . . Boston, easy. In fact, while they complain about
traffic, I vocally disagree and point out it's the drivers. I would reserve the "worst traffic" award to someplace that deserves it. I could fill a book with all the bad habits I've seen in America, and sure all of those happen in Boston too. I could fill
another book with just the crazy stuff I've
only seen in Boston. These people just flat-out should not be driving, because the drivers here aren't merely inattentive or lazy or incompetent or even possibly drunk. You can kind of see what mood people are in by the way they drive. Aggressive cut-offs, weaving in and out of lanes, and heavy pedal feet are all internally consistent in their own way. And again, you see plenty of that. AND THEN, there's the
jank. Like the city itself needs a bug patch. Like. . . just. . .
why??
Just one example.
ONE. Have you ever been driving along a four-lane one-way road (not a highway but a main city artery), camping in your lane at 40-45mph because things are moving along, and then suddenly see the car in front of you
slam its brakes right in the middle of the lanes, green light ahead and nothing within 50m in front of it, and you have to swerve violently to avoid it? If you were checking Facebook you'd be
dead. Something that just defies all logic, common sense, self-interest, self-
preservation, or even any goddamn reason you can possibly think of? It's just a WTF freakout like you're
driving in an MDickie game. Well, this kind of thing isn't even
rare in Boston. It just. . . happens. You literally can't trust anyone in any situation for even a second. You can't assume they're limited to jerkish-but-I-get-it things like cutting you off or driving verrry slowly. For all you know the car in front of you might swerve off the road, run a lap around someone's mailbox and then slowly back into a port-a-potty like it needs to take a crap because I've basically seen everything but.
I've driven down the east coast from Boston to Tampa multiple times and I live in California now. Cali easily has the worst drivers. In the past week I've seen people regularly disregard headlights during rain or nighttime, refuse to use turn signals, not letting people over when they need to merge (yesterday I saw two cars basically playing chicken with someone who needed to get into their lane, speeding up and slowing down just because they simply would not allow anyone to get in front of them), tailgating HARD and absolutely flipping out when people are not moving out of their way immediately, abusing the carpool lanes by going over double yellow lines repeatedly to use it as a way to get pass cars during heavy traffic.
Meh. I've driven in Cali and drive in Boston these days; I see all that on a regular basis here, worse, AND The Jank.
Anyone wants to challenge Boston for the honor of Worst Drivers in the World, they need to beat The Jank. And I don't even know how you'd go about doing that, to say nothing of why anyone in their right mind would want to.
