My first reaction is "....and the horse you rode in on."
I've been to Cali and there is no room for the drivers out there to brag. Plus the roads are packed even in rural areas. The road from SF to Sacramento is a long parking lot all day long. LA? You just don't see the drivers through the smog.
Yeah, Houston drivers are pretty bad. Dallas is worse, IMHO, because those crazy bastards keep moving the roads around! Try to drive through there with a GPS and good luck making it anywhere. A road labeled "East" may be going north or west. An exit that was there last week is now closed so it can be moved somewhere else.
I've also driven in NYC, Boston, Washington DC, NJ, and Philadelphia. NYC was at night, and pretty scary. Boston drivers don't seem to care what color the light is, or which direction the street is supposed to go. I've heard horror stories about driving in Moscow where nobody pays attention to the rules, and I think Boston could give them a run for their money. The beltway around Washington is like 20 lanes wide, and there are people who have moved here from 3rd World Countries and somehow got a driver's license at the flea market. They don't hesitate to drive laterally across the lanes. Or drive 15 MPH in a 55. My brother lived in Philly for a while and I visited him there during a business trip. The old roads were designed for horse and buggy, not cars and trucks, and there are only 1/10 as many parking places as cars. So you see people driving half a mile down a street backwards because they saw someone pull out of a parking space. New Jersey? I've seen people cut off an ambulance. Get to a toll booth and 9 lanes of traffic are funneled into 2, with everyone pissed at everyone else. Ugly.
The worst I've seen in Houston was a woman driving up the East 610 Loop during evening rush hour, dodging in and out of lanes to move through traffic at 70 MPH+ with one foot out the window, propped on the side mirror, and painting her toenails on that foot while she drove. I followed for a while, just to see the wreck that had to happen, but eventually had to give up and head home.
I've been to Cali and there is no room for the drivers out there to brag. Plus the roads are packed even in rural areas. The road from SF to Sacramento is a long parking lot all day long. LA? You just don't see the drivers through the smog.
Yeah, Houston drivers are pretty bad. Dallas is worse, IMHO, because those crazy bastards keep moving the roads around! Try to drive through there with a GPS and good luck making it anywhere. A road labeled "East" may be going north or west. An exit that was there last week is now closed so it can be moved somewhere else.
I've also driven in NYC, Boston, Washington DC, NJ, and Philadelphia. NYC was at night, and pretty scary. Boston drivers don't seem to care what color the light is, or which direction the street is supposed to go. I've heard horror stories about driving in Moscow where nobody pays attention to the rules, and I think Boston could give them a run for their money. The beltway around Washington is like 20 lanes wide, and there are people who have moved here from 3rd World Countries and somehow got a driver's license at the flea market. They don't hesitate to drive laterally across the lanes. Or drive 15 MPH in a 55. My brother lived in Philly for a while and I visited him there during a business trip. The old roads were designed for horse and buggy, not cars and trucks, and there are only 1/10 as many parking places as cars. So you see people driving half a mile down a street backwards because they saw someone pull out of a parking space. New Jersey? I've seen people cut off an ambulance. Get to a toll booth and 9 lanes of traffic are funneled into 2, with everyone pissed at everyone else. Ugly.
The worst I've seen in Houston was a woman driving up the East 610 Loop during evening rush hour, dodging in and out of lanes to move through traffic at 70 MPH+ with one foot out the window, propped on the side mirror, and painting her toenails on that foot while she drove. I followed for a while, just to see the wreck that had to happen, but eventually had to give up and head home.