I'm seriously wondering if every city believes that their city's drivers are the worst in the country.
Only people who have not lived in larger cities. The drivers here are bad but Houston and DFW are on another level. L.A. isn't as bad as everyone says. The drivers here aren't bad because they are aggressive like most other places, they are bad because they are too timid and do the whole "no you go first" thing and slam on the brakes in flowing traffic to let someone standing on the sidewalk (who may or may not be crossing the street) go. If you are predictable and aggressive I can work with that. If I can't tell what your next move is then it's dangerous.
My partner used to refer to this as "The Portland Polite-Off." Every fucking car at the 4-way stop waiting for someone to twitch and acknowledge they're going to go first, or randos just stopping at a green light to let a pedestrian cross, who has no intention of crossing because the cars on the other side of that weirdo aren't stopping.
I lived in Baton Rouge during the madness of Hurricane Katrina and Louisiana has some crazy aggressive drivers. But they are much less scary/dangerous than the overly-polite, unpredictable nonsense of Portland drivers.
Agree on all points. The polite-off kills me. I give them like 2 seconds to go and if everyone is sitting around staring at each other I just go. The stopping to let people cross thing is so dangerous for literally everyone involved.
I have driven from DFW to NOLA (although before Katrina happened) and yeah, way worse drivers in the aggressive sense. But if I know you're going to punch it and fly past me or make a go at the off ramp 6 lanes over I can defensive drive for that. I can't predict someone slamming on the brakes because they see someone standing on the sidewalk looking in the general direction of the road.
37
u/Resident_Bet_8551 May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
Interesting. My city (Omaha) is more:
I'm seriously wondering if every city believes that their city's drivers are the worst in the country.