The drivers in N.M. are worse. Try driving on the interstate behind a crack-head, or even worse, a crack-head who is trying to chop his kids head of with a steak knife.
I’ve done the I-25 south to I-40 west more time than I can count. You’re absolutely right about the crackheads. Also, drivers there seem to believe in speed limits, which is odd for a Rocky Mountain state. But spend a month in rush hour traffic on Academy, and you’ll swear everybody is on crack. With steak knives.
I drove a lot in Colorado in the late 70′s through mid 80′s, and don’t remember anything that terrible. But then it was during the summers and mostly in small towns in the flat, flat East, Sterling was the largest …
Fort Myers, Florida really was hell though. (Before the interstate maybe took some pressure off 41, at least). As one traffic cop put it, “people just close their eyes and hope for the best”.
Yes, the traffic and parking are bad in D.C., but the really amazing thing is watch the whole place crap out the second someone mentions the word ‘snow’. I had just moved down here from Maine when my roommate and I went to a WalMart in VA to pick up some supplies. There was about 2 and a half inches of snow on the ground, but the residency acted like they were driving through a mine field. The conditions were completely manageable, but one lady just quit in the middle of 395, heading past the Pentagon. Middle lane, full stop, blinkers on, talking on the phone. Car was fine. She just didn’t know how to drive in snow.
One of the things that keeps NM drivers at the posted speeds, I believe, is the altitude. I once drove across the country on I-40 from east TN to northern NM. Once I passed into NM, the speed limit changed from 70 to 75. I had spent the trip going 5mph over the posted speeds, so I tried setting the cruise on 80. No go. The altitude and the fierce headwinds conspired to keep my car hunting for a gear. Many cars just can’t go faster than 75 because at least half the state is above 1 mile altitude.
Snow is Gods way for drivers to learn physics.
Do to the Big Dig (10 years now), downtown Boston is like a 1944 Berlin after a good RAF bombing. On the other had, the drivers are consistent. Consistently, aggressively bad and mean spirited. All the weak and kind have been killed off. So, once you get the a la Mad Max rhythm, traffic floes smooth. Tip to newbies, the more beat up car gets the right of way.
Never having been in Colorado, I have no direct basis for comparisson, but for my money, from Nome to the Island of Crete, the absolute worst drivers are in Anchorage, Alaska.
We have a large rotating military population and many civilian folks who seem to rotate through here every few years too.
Redlights and stop signs are advisory. When the light turns green here, you wait and look both ways before daring to proceed. And every fall, it’s like the entire population forgot how to drive on snow and ice.
We too have the idiots from down south, in their behemouth SUV’s with all wheel drive and studs, who think that they are now immune to the laws of physics.
I don’t mind them killing themselves, but it’s the innocents they take with them that makes me angry. A recent episode for me here slipslidin away
And crack heads, lowlifes and other assorted double digit IQ reprobates all driving like they’re the only ones on the road, ditto.
Couple that in the summer with the blue rinse brigade slowly doddering down the road in their land tuna motor homes, gawking at the scenery while fussing with the lid on their medication and I’m thinking, maybe Colorado drivers are just transplanted Anchoragites.
Nice, have expat Californians surpassed Texas tourists as the most hated drivers in Colorado?
The math for driving home from a ski trip is one hour for every 75 miles plus one hour for Colorado Springs.
I’ve been to a lot of places and I rank Colorado Springs as number 1 in most frustrating places to drive and Houston as the most dangerous place to drive. Somehow Houston combines extreme congestion with high speed, the tow truck drivers line the access roads like turkey buzzards on a fence line. I hate Houston.
I moved from the Chicago subrubs out to here. Yeah, it’s shockingly bad.
I never realized how much planning it took to have a good road system until I got out here.
I’m also amazed at people who don’t use blinkers. Don’t you care to know where other people will be going? Would you please extend the same courtesy? And get out of the left lane if you
I’ve never been to Colorado, but having been up and down the east coast, I think the worst are right here in Orlando Florida. the roads are bad and the signals are worse. You have the old fogies who don’t have much longer to live anyway, can’t see over the steering wheel and go 20mph on the interstate. The hispanics that can’t drive worth a lick (except for me of course!) driving around in their lowered idiotmobiles. Then there are the tourist from all over the world driving around like they do in their hometown and since Orlando prides itself on the lack of signs, they have no idea where they are going or how to get to the house of the rat.
What I hate most about Colorado drivers:
1) Following too close on I-25. Hey guys, we’re going 75 mph–do you really think you should be only 10 ft behind me?
2) The complete inability to comprehend/accept the concept that slower traffic should keep to the right. I driver the Diagonal Hwy from Longmont to Boulder for my commute. Constantly, there are people who tie up traffic by driving slowly in the lefthand lane because, you know, they’re going to be turning left in 5 miles. Putting up the “keep right” signs has done nothing to change this.
I was a bit disturbed by the Longmont guys’ reaction. Does he not feel any sense of belonging to a larger community? His “me only” ‘tude was annoying.
I’ve driven in Dallas, Houston, and L.A., but Colorado Springs holds its own for bad drivers. I’ve driven Academy and I-25, and I quickly learned my lesson about signalling.
I try to be a curteous driver and consistent use of signals is part of that. Heck, I even signal when now one is around, just out of habit. But if you signal in Colorado Springs, you’d better only do so at the last second.
Oh yeah… and then there are the tailgaters and darters. If you observe good traffic practices and leave two seconds between you and the vehicle in front of you, you’ll quickly find yourself the insertion point for a long procession of darting fools who are jockying for position.
I am a Colorado native. I live in Longmont. I drive to the Denver Tech Center everyday (94 miles round trip). I had a computer contract at the Ft. Carson Army hospital in the past and had to drive from Longmont once a week. I have had to drive Monument Hill in a blizzard.
I have lived in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and driven most of America. Colorado certainly has the worst mix of drivers.
Stephen, I feel your pain. I can certainly understand Jason’s attitude, just like I can understand the guy who had a dummy in the passenger seat so he could use the HOV lane. The time saved is worth the fine.
Colorado has horrible drivers and not enough road. Light Rail can’t come soon enough for me.
Sounds like you have a lot of the same problems in CO that we have here in Austin, TX, especially the tiny highways that fail to keep up with a booming population.
People around here drive like they have their heads in the clouds: unpredictably and with no regard for traffic flows or other drivers. The signature move here is the mad scramble to pass someone in a merging lane. They don’t seem to realize they are in the same lane as the cars they are passing.
I moved here from Boston and I totally agree with Paul. Boston has a reputation for bad driving, but really the drivers are predictable and rational, just very aggressive. It is intimidating to newcomers, but you learn that it makes a lot of sense. It was much better than the utter lack of reason on display here in TX. I had never seen so many massive accidents until I moved here.
Gotta agree with par about DC being the worst. I’m a native DC-area resident (NoVA), and par’s right about snow panic. But it’s also bad b/c of all the influx of people from everywhere in the U.S., and immigrants, too. Legal or illegal, most know nothing about driving customs such as passing lanes, merge lanes, moving out of the right lane to allow room for a merging car, and positioning oneself in the intersection for a left turn so that we all don’t have to wait 50 light cycles to turn left. It’s totally nuts around here. Oh, and riding brake lights 24/7 causing stupid meaningless backups. Argh!
When I moved from the Bay Area to Fargo I suddenly found myself going through yellow-red lights over and over and over. I don’t know what they did differently in Fargo but it was just bizarre. Maybe the yellow lights were shorter.
Something I will say that I’ve found true. Drivers in urban areas with god-awful interstate exchanges let you in. Drivers in less populated areas, no matter how bad the traffic, don’t.
That said, before they expanded I-80 in Richmond, anytime I drove would be a religious experience as first I prayed for a miracle all the way down the on-ramp and then praised the Lord my God for getting me on the freeway safely. And I’m not just saying that. Those were *sincere* prayers.
It was bad in New Orleans even before Katrina. Now it’s even worse. Natives aside, tourist drivers here have special problems as they expect the city to be laid out in a logical way according to the compass points. It isn’t, it curves to match the bend of the river, and telling someone to drive, say, west isn’t going to hold for more than ten blocks. When I got back in December the tourists were gone but had been replaced by contractors from around the entire country. This was worse because they didn’t just stick to the tourist areas, they were getting lost everywhere. (They’re finally learning.)
Then there’s the roads. Before they repaved it a few years ago I used to say that driving on Tchoupitoulas by the river was like being a river pilot in Mark Twain’s day. Like the river’s shoals and sandbars, the size, shape, and depth of the potholes were in constant flux, and you had to keep a wary eye out or you’d break an axle.
In the heavily flooded Broadmoor area, one couple got so fed up with an enormous pothole, one they’d been dealing with since six months before Katrina, that they turned it into a wildlife refuge. It’s true.
Stephen,
While I have driven much of the rest of Colorado, I can’t claim experience with Colorado Springs specifically.
But the worst Texas Suburban, drunk New Mexico Indian in a clapped out pickup truck, deranged West Virginia hillbilly in a Concord or Grand Am cannot compare to the sheer, irrational death wish of ANY Massachusetts driver, especially the dreaded Volvo.
Heck, any vehicle with more than one wheel is rude, clueless, out of control and unpredictably dangerous anywhere in Massachusetts, especially in the eastern half. Good luck with the rotaries, and hope that the cops don’t hit you, they are as bad as the rest of the populace.
I could be wrong, but I think in Chicago the car entering the freeway has a right of way, and the cars already on the freeway have to look out for them. quite sensible.
It first dawned on me to move away from Atlanta after my second hit & run crash on a motorcycle within a year. It took several more years for the conviction to solidify, but it all started with the traffic around that town. It was making me a sociopath. They’re all idiots, down there.
That traffic-light changer sparked an idea. Why not give everyone one of those? The lights could have a system to note the number of signals coming from one direction, keep the light green in that direction until the number of those cars falls below the number of signals coming from the crossing street, then turn green for them. Traffic democracy! Until someone hacks THAT system!
Duane: The difference is that having a dummy in the passenger seat affects nobody (except someone else trying to use the HOV lane – which I can see not caring about, since HOV lanes are vile and evil, and at worst all it does is make them as slow as they’d be if they weren’t HOV lanes… while letting the non-HOV lanes speed up a bit towards where they’d be if all the lanes were normal)…
But his “light changer” does affect other people; namely everyone else on every cross street, who has a sudden, out-of-sequence change of light to deal with.
(Then there’s the matter of the Categorical Imperative, if we want to bust out the Kant. If everyone had a dummy in the seat for HOV lane use, the effect would merely be to make the HOV lane exactly like a normal lane. (As they should always have been in any decent, God-fearing place!)
The effect of universal adoption of the light-changer, however, would be to make all traffic come to a standstill as everyone tried to give their own direction priority. There’s a reason that stuff’s illegal, and in this case it’s even a good reason.)
My take for years has been that Colorado may not have the *worst* drivers (those in the Phillipines were the worst ones I’ve run across, although I’ve seen pretty bad ones here, including a taxi that turned left in front of me from the lane to my right), but that it certainly has the most *discourteous* drivers I’ve run across.
Long ago, when my commute to Longmont went north from Broomfield via what was, at the time, a 2-lane country road with highway-level speed limits, I was part of a long line of cars stuck behind a piece of farm machinery doing 15 mph.
Near the Alexander Dawson school, there is a small hill, at which there was a passing lane if you were climbing. The first car in line pulled out from behind the farm equipment, then stayed even with it for the duration of the climbing lane before speeding up to pull in front of it.
Made me wish that Gallagher’s humorous suggestion about driving had been implemented. (Every driver gets a dart gun, and when someone pisses you off, you shoot a dart into their trunk. When the police see someone with too many darts in their trunk, they give them a ticket for being an asshole.)
The ‘turn signal tells the other driver to cut you off’ description is absolutely correct. It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved here, and it’s never changed in 25 years.
The first bumper sticker I saw a lot of after moving here was “Don’t Californicate Colorado,” but I think it had a larger meaning than just driving styles.
The lights on academy ARE timed, but for 140mph. Obviously the zoomies got both naming rights and timing. In my rx7 me and a foxbody 5.0 made it from platte to woodmen in about 3 minutes, which wasn’t the point, we were looking for stop lights .
Wow, this is a lot of comments about bad drivers around the world!
I’ve made the drive from Ft. Collins south on 25 through the Springs (heading to Canon City area for sport climbing) on several Friday nights, and no, it’s not any fun. I agree that the Springs has the worst drivers in the state, and it has the worst section of I-25 in the state. And none of the roads or traffic get any better if you have to exit the interstate for gas or groceries or any other reason.
Denver is bad. Boulder is bad. Longmont sucks. I’d say the Fort has the best traffic on the Front Range, but I just found out yesterday that this incredibly annoying closure of two major roads near my house is going to last until October! Ugh.
Thank goodness there are good bike paths and trails everywhere out here. I’m not going to get to Canon City on my bike, but at least I don’t have to sit in traffic on sunny afternoons.
I’ve driven all over the west and some in Europe. I live in Colorado (58 mile roundtrip commute from Thornton to Gunbarrel). Colorado, as a state, isn’t so much worse than lots of other places.
Colorado Springs, OTOH, is pretty awful. IME, the only place in-state that is even comparable is Grand Junction.
That said, Phoenix metro (Mesa/Tempe/Chandler/Gilbert in specific) is worse. The mix of college-age students and 85-year-old snowbirds with extremely rapid population growth is especially unfortunate. Las Vegas is also pretty bad, but not in Phoenix’s league.
Back in 2003 my wife and I took our travel trailer on our first trip from NJ to Colorado Springs.(Did you know Kansas is uphill every mile from east to west on I-40?) I made a tactical error of taking a shortcut off I-40 directly to CS and then in turning onto Academy as we headed north to Monument and our reserved campground.
We made it through to I-25 safely and found that under construction. Sections of it still were when we went back in ’05.
I must say that with it’s combination of extra wide (6 to 8 lane) roads and only I-25 as a north-south route from CS to Denver…well, it was an adventure.
BTW, it was amazing to see the changes in just those two years. In ’05 we came in through Castle Rock and drove south to Monument. Nothing but McMansions going up.
Try driving in any city in India. THAT will put the fear of God in you. First time I drove in US, it was a shock to my system: well marked lanes, people driving within lanes, lights that work, people obeying them, turn signals on cars, people heeding them, hearing a horn once in a while, rather than thousands of horns every second, policemen fining errant drivers, rather than fleecing everybody, not having to share the road with horse-carts, bicycles, stray cows, stray dogs, stray goats and smoke belching three wheeled vehicles. I tell you guys, this country IS a paradise on earth. You have NOTHING to complain about!
I soooo agree with you about the ridiculous lights in the Springs. Forget Academy, why the heck are the lights downtown timed for 40 mph? And the little-used side streets that have 2-minute light cycles? And the countdown timers that don’t change the light until 20 seconds after the timer reaches zero? It’s completely insane. It’s like the planners have never visited a real city where these things are, you know, planned.
I don’t know that the drivers here are any worse than Arizona or Florida, though. I like Californians — if they hit you, they damn well meant to.
Tushar- I know what you’re talking about…the traffic in Cairo is exactly like you describe, except with less police involvement. Scary at first, but almost seems fun when you get used to it.
My complaints of Colorado drivers are the red light runners in Denver and the occasional aggressive drivers on I25.
Other US cities I have not liked driving in:
Anchorage
Minneapolis
Seattle
Houston
Sacramento
“The first bumper sticker I saw a lot of after moving here was “Don’t Californicate Colorado,” but I think it had a larger meaning than just driving styles.”
I think I remember that from 1972 or there abouts. It can’t have been much later.
I mentioned my Colorado driving experience earlier, upthread, I’ll add that a few places (Woodland Park esp, maybe into CS) seemed to have a lot of drivers visibly under the influence (as in staggering out of a bar into their cars and heading off into glory).
And, Colorado had absolutely the most confusing city I’ve _ever_ driven in, Pueblo. I could swear that the roads move around when you’re not looking there. I was never able to take the same route twice and got lost for half an hour on what should have been an around the corner errand.
I’ve never been as scared as I was in Montreal, Quebec. Terrified.
I learned to drive in New York, which means I’m very aggressive. Of all the major cities I’ve driven in (which include NYC and surrounding tri-state area; Syracuse, NY; Rochester, NY; Buffalo, NY; Halifax, NS; Toronto, ON; the entire East Coast; Atlanta, GA; Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, FL; New Orleans, LA; and many more), Miami and Orlando are tied for my #1 position of worst drivers.
Part of the problem is Florida Black Ice (which happens when it rains, and it rains every afternoon in the summer). Tourists just can’t deal with the slick roads we get here. Sherlock is right, Orlando is terribly lacking in signage. And the roads change names every few blocks (literally). This is not an easy city to navigate.
I wasn’t of driving age when I lived in Aurora and Littleton, CO, so I can’t speak of the driving conditions. But I remember always hearing the traffic reports and the favorite phrase was always “spectator slowdown”.
When I said that Orlando was the worst, I thought we were talking about US cities, if you want to add foreign countries to the mix then I would have to go with Colombia, South America. In the city of Barranquilla, there are very few signs and lights, which is fine since no one obeys them anyway. The streets are the all in very poor shape, cracked and potholes everywhere. the lines in the road mean nothing as the amount of taffic lanes depends on how many cars and motorcycles can fit. The right of way belongs to the biggest car, buses and taxis pull out without caring if there is anyone coming, getting on the bus is a ‘catch it if you can and jump on while it’s moving’ adventure. Cross the street at your own risk, traffic will not stop for you. On a taxi trip from Barranquilla to Cartagena, the driver was doing over 100 kph on a two lane road in very poor shape and that had several parts where it was washed out to be only one lane and a long steep drop was on the other side. Talk about terrifying! This is driving at it’s most primal and while there are probably other third world countries that have the same kind of driving, I’m sure it can’t get any worse.
Fellow Coloradan, and so far you’re missing a major category of the worst drivers we’ve got around Boulder/Longmont:
New college students from out of state who have apparently never seen weather before.
I commute about 20 minutes from Longmont to the CU-Boulder campus each way, each day. If it is anything but perfectly sunny, my commute time doubles in length, with the bulk of that time coming within a mile of campus.
Snow is a miraculous wonder to these students, who have no clue how their braking systems work on wet roads. Nor are they familiar with the term “following distance,” especially in conjunction with the term “appropriate.”
In the states the worse I saw was the I-4 Corridor from Tampa to Orlando. If it wasn’t under construction (which it always was) there were constant trailer jackknifes plus tourists from all over the world driving the way they drive in their home state or country. Hell, I’ve seen folks slam on the brakes to take a pic of a Palm Tree.
Outside of the country, BANGALORE or MUMBAI hands down…
I moved to Colorado (Parker, 20 miles SE of downtown Denver) about 9 months ago; I haven’t found the drivers here to be particularly bad, though that may be due to the fact that I moved here from Washington DC.
I’ve lived (and driven) in California (San Diego and Bay Area), Utah, Texas, Virginia (northern), Maryland (southern), Washington DC (yep, right in the District), Colorado, and Costa Rica. Leaving aside Costa Rica (a whole different world of driving), I’ve found that people in all those other places claim they have the worst drivers. Utah is the only place I’ve found that tends to live up (or down) to that.
On the other hand, I haven’t lived or driven in Colorado Springs. ..fritz..
Rio Grande Valley area of Texas. You have your 90 year old retirees driving 20 under the speed limit, legally blind, like Florida. You have your recent immigrants who are used to driving in Mexico which (like most third-world locales) has no particularly adequate enforcement of what traffic laws there are. They are going 20 OVER the speed limit, and pay little attention to such details as red lights, lane lines, or exit ramps. The only folks going the speed limit are lost tourists, with all that that entails.
There literally is no safe speed – you are always either overtaking, being overtaken, or both, at 20 miles an hour differential – and you are probably passing grandma who’s in the left lane with her right blinker on (50-50 she actually moves over either into or directly in front of you while you pass on the right) while Speedy Gonzales passes you via the entrance ramp. I saw more dinged-up cars down there than I ever have anywhere, ever.
I think we need to distinguish between discourteous drivers and drivers who simply don’t obey traffic laws.
I’ve driven all over the US, in Israel and in South America.
For the latter (law breaking), I’ve found none worse than those in Nevada. They seem to have complete, and utter, disdain for the law.
For the former, it’s a tossup between California, especially Los Angeles, and Israel. The most common trait amongst Californians is they don’t signal, they just change lanes, often for no particular reason. They invented rolling stops for right on red. This is all exacerbated by a mish-mash of cultures so there isn’t a consistant madness (like in New York, Chicago or Israel.)
The most insane driving I’ve witnessed is Israel. They never seem to use rear view mirrors. I can’t count the number of times, I saw people get into their car and just back up without looking in their mirror. But, since everyone was just as insane, it appeared to perversely work. (I understand the accident rate in Israel is astronomically high, but I never saw a traffic accident while there.)
Fort Myers was hell, eh? It’s still pretty bad, though 75 helped the 41 traffic a bit.
We have drivers from all over the country (for that matter, all over the world) – and each one of them drives with habits picked up in their home town.
And a driver from a place where you wait to let everyone run the red (and who runs it themselves) is NOT compatible with someone who drives the pedal to the metal the microsecond the light turns green.
The worst drivers in the world are most definitely…
immediately in front of you when you need to be somewhere other than stuck in traffic. And therein lies the problem, because we will invariably be in front of someone else, in a just as much of a hurry.
Kathy K, for a year or so I had a 30 mile (one way) commute from Punta Gorda to college parkway (before I-75 opened up). I quickly learned to try to get through it before 7:30 when the real crazies started showing up. Going back wasn’t so much of a problem as it would be mostly slow stop and go from a little north of the Edison mall to the bridge (there was also an hour and a half from around 12:30 to 2:00 that wasn’t too bad).
Now I live in Poland where I don’t have to drive and am happy not to as there are three primary rules:
1) always look straight ahead, never to the sides or in back,
2) if you think you can go 10 mph faster, it is your moral duty to do so,
3) traffic lights and traffic signs are mere suggestions
I’ve driven in Boston, Denver, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, DC, St. Louis, Toronto and all points between same.
Boston is bad, with its cabbies going full blast everywhere and its drivers a bit on the lacksidasical side at high speed.
Buffalo has a bad day with the first snow and then everyone remembers driving skills again. That said most of the roads are bad with potholes to the point the joke is: ‘How can you tell he was drunk? He was driving *straight* down Kensington.’ You learn to play artful dodgem with the pot holes and trying to think of what the other guy is doing before he does it. Fun, but not usually lethal.
Denver is so-so, with winter driving skills spotty compared to Buffalo. The folks there depend way too much on ‘the great solar snow plough’. The mousetrap there is awful (or was, at least… I believe it was scheduled for replacement).
Now living in NoVA, I will attest to the worst drivers of all being embassy staff with immunity from the laws. Many of them appear to come from places without *roads*. I have personally witnessed one actually STOP on the beltway and then BACKUP against 4 lanes of traffic for a half-mile to get to a missed exit.
Add in the transient military, students from all over, and the rest of the foreign entourage and the motorcades and such: it is abominable. And in VA indicators are a ‘courtesy’ but not mandatory for anything. U-turns *except* in areas marked otherwise… even on 4 lane busy highways.
You learn to give *all* red,white and blue diplomatic plates wide, wide berths or get past them as fast as possible. And winter is always a joy when there is ice or snow on the ground, no winter driving skills at all. In theory you don’t need them for such short stays of bad weather as is seen here… until a real storm hits, then everything slows to an absolute crawl after the first day.
Now that my personal driving days are over, these are but memories as I am now that least respected of all beings: passenger.
great description of the awful CO Springs drivers. We were there 4 years, just left last year. Before that we were in Jersey. I’ve driven in NYC, Philly, Chicago. CO Springs is definitely the worst we’ve ever seen.
I cannot believe you noticed that too. It it the too slow to go and the too fast for sanity crowd. Never understanding condition, but you were right. At least in CA, cops were doing 80 in the slow lane looking for the backups and the mess that is “I gotta hold traffic back attitude” croud.
All limits are broken to the point where someone is killed.
Colorado was one of the rare places to drive. It was like asking a bartender for a martini and him giving you a drink on the rocks. Drivers did not connect. Strange that I can drive fast and uninterrupted in some places and yet remember how bad it was in colorado.
I moved to CO from MD 6 yrs ago. I had driven all my adult life in the Washington DC metro area, rated 2nd worst traffic nationwide, so I know whereof I speak.
Colorado drivers are some of the worst I’ve seen. Three things they do that drive me nuts and make me want to climb a tall tower with a 30/06 and footlocker full of ammo:
1)The last second right turn from the center or left lane (and other combinations similar)
2)Waiting 5 seconds after the light turns green before pulling away at a pace slightly slower than the average glacier.
3)Generally driving 10mph under the speed limit in the left lane on Kipling, Wadsworth, &c.
Worst are the expatriate Californians. They come out here in their giant SUVs and no experience with winter weather. Here
The drivers in N.M. are worse. Try driving on the interstate behind a crack-head, or even worse, a crack-head who is trying to chop his kids head of with a steak knife.
I’ve done the I-25 south to I-40 west more time than I can count. You’re absolutely right about the crackheads. Also, drivers there seem to believe in speed limits, which is odd for a Rocky Mountain state. But spend a month in rush hour traffic on Academy, and you’ll swear everybody is on crack. With steak knives.
I drove a lot in Colorado in the late 70′s through mid 80′s, and don’t remember anything that terrible. But then it was during the summers and mostly in small towns in the flat, flat East, Sterling was the largest …
Fort Myers, Florida really was hell though. (Before the interstate maybe took some pressure off 41, at least). As one traffic cop put it, “people just close their eyes and hope for the best”.
Yes, the traffic and parking are bad in D.C., but the really amazing thing is watch the whole place crap out the second someone mentions the word ‘snow’. I had just moved down here from Maine when my roommate and I went to a WalMart in VA to pick up some supplies. There was about 2 and a half inches of snow on the ground, but the residency acted like they were driving through a mine field. The conditions were completely manageable, but one lady just quit in the middle of 395, heading past the Pentagon. Middle lane, full stop, blinkers on, talking on the phone. Car was fine. She just didn’t know how to drive in snow.
One of the things that keeps NM drivers at the posted speeds, I believe, is the altitude. I once drove across the country on I-40 from east TN to northern NM. Once I passed into NM, the speed limit changed from 70 to 75. I had spent the trip going 5mph over the posted speeds, so I tried setting the cruise on 80. No go. The altitude and the fierce headwinds conspired to keep my car hunting for a gear. Many cars just can’t go faster than 75 because at least half the state is above 1 mile altitude.
Snow is Gods way for drivers to learn physics.
Do to the Big Dig (10 years now), downtown Boston is like a 1944 Berlin after a good RAF bombing. On the other had, the drivers are consistent. Consistently, aggressively bad and mean spirited. All the weak and kind have been killed off. So, once you get the a la Mad Max rhythm, traffic floes smooth. Tip to newbies, the more beat up car gets the right of way.
>But Colorado insn’t exactly Colorado.>But Colorado insn’t exactly Colorado.<
Errrm–so what is it exactly? Aztlan?
Stephen,
Never having been in Colorado, I have no direct basis for comparisson, but for my money, from Nome to the Island of Crete, the absolute worst drivers are in Anchorage, Alaska.
We have a large rotating military population and many civilian folks who seem to rotate through here every few years too.
Redlights and stop signs are advisory. When the light turns green here, you wait and look both ways before daring to proceed. And every fall, it’s like the entire population forgot how to drive on snow and ice.
We too have the idiots from down south, in their behemouth SUV’s with all wheel drive and studs, who think that they are now immune to the laws of physics.
I don’t mind them killing themselves, but it’s the innocents they take with them that makes me angry. A recent episode for me here slipslidin away
And crack heads, lowlifes and other assorted double digit IQ reprobates all driving like they’re the only ones on the road, ditto.
Couple that in the summer with the blue rinse brigade slowly doddering down the road in their land tuna motor homes, gawking at the scenery while fussing with the lid on their medication and I’m thinking, maybe Colorado drivers are just transplanted Anchoragites.
Nice, have expat Californians surpassed Texas tourists as the most hated drivers in Colorado?
The math for driving home from a ski trip is one hour for every 75 miles plus one hour for Colorado Springs.
I’ve been to a lot of places and I rank Colorado Springs as number 1 in most frustrating places to drive and Houston as the most dangerous place to drive. Somehow Houston combines extreme congestion with high speed, the tow truck drivers line the access roads like turkey buzzards on a fence line. I hate Houston.
I grew up outside of Boston. I remember hearing the traffic report when a pedestrian was struck by a car *while he was still on the sidewalk*.
The motto in Boston is “he who hesitates is parked”.
I moved from the Chicago subrubs out to here. Yeah, it’s shockingly bad.
I never realized how much planning it took to have a good road system until I got out here.
I’m also amazed at people who don’t use blinkers. Don’t you care to know where other people will be going? Would you please extend the same courtesy? And get out of the left lane if you
I’ve never been to Colorado, but having been up and down the east coast, I think the worst are right here in Orlando Florida. the roads are bad and the signals are worse. You have the old fogies who don’t have much longer to live anyway, can’t see over the steering wheel and go 20mph on the interstate. The hispanics that can’t drive worth a lick (except for me of course!) driving around in their lowered idiotmobiles. Then there are the tourist from all over the world driving around like they do in their hometown and since Orlando prides itself on the lack of signs, they have no idea where they are going or how to get to the house of the rat.
What I hate most about Colorado drivers:
1) Following too close on I-25. Hey guys, we’re going 75 mph–do you really think you should be only 10 ft behind me?
2) The complete inability to comprehend/accept the concept that slower traffic should keep to the right. I driver the Diagonal Hwy from Longmont to Boulder for my commute. Constantly, there are people who tie up traffic by driving slowly in the lefthand lane because, you know, they’re going to be turning left in 5 miles. Putting up the “keep right” signs has done nothing to change this.
I was a bit disturbed by the Longmont guys’ reaction. Does he not feel any sense of belonging to a larger community? His “me only” ‘tude was annoying.
I’ve driven in Dallas, Houston, and L.A., but Colorado Springs holds its own for bad drivers. I’ve driven Academy and I-25, and I quickly learned my lesson about signalling.
I try to be a curteous driver and consistent use of signals is part of that. Heck, I even signal when now one is around, just out of habit. But if you signal in Colorado Springs, you’d better only do so at the last second.
Oh yeah… and then there are the tailgaters and darters. If you observe good traffic practices and leave two seconds between you and the vehicle in front of you, you’ll quickly find yourself the insertion point for a long procession of darting fools who are jockying for position.
I am a Colorado native. I live in Longmont. I drive to the Denver Tech Center everyday (94 miles round trip). I had a computer contract at the Ft. Carson Army hospital in the past and had to drive from Longmont once a week. I have had to drive Monument Hill in a blizzard.
I have lived in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and driven most of America. Colorado certainly has the worst mix of drivers.
Stephen, I feel your pain. I can certainly understand Jason’s attitude, just like I can understand the guy who had a dummy in the passenger seat so he could use the HOV lane. The time saved is worth the fine.
Colorado has horrible drivers and not enough road. Light Rail can’t come soon enough for me.
Sounds like you have a lot of the same problems in CO that we have here in Austin, TX, especially the tiny highways that fail to keep up with a booming population.
People around here drive like they have their heads in the clouds: unpredictably and with no regard for traffic flows or other drivers. The signature move here is the mad scramble to pass someone in a merging lane. They don’t seem to realize they are in the same lane as the cars they are passing.
I moved here from Boston and I totally agree with Paul. Boston has a reputation for bad driving, but really the drivers are predictable and rational, just very aggressive. It is intimidating to newcomers, but you learn that it makes a lot of sense. It was much better than the utter lack of reason on display here in TX. I had never seen so many massive accidents until I moved here.
Gotta agree with par about DC being the worst. I’m a native DC-area resident (NoVA), and par’s right about snow panic. But it’s also bad b/c of all the influx of people from everywhere in the U.S., and immigrants, too. Legal or illegal, most know nothing about driving customs such as passing lanes, merge lanes, moving out of the right lane to allow room for a merging car, and positioning oneself in the intersection for a left turn so that we all don’t have to wait 50 light cycles to turn left. It’s totally nuts around here. Oh, and riding brake lights 24/7 causing stupid meaningless backups. Argh!
When I moved from the Bay Area to Fargo I suddenly found myself going through yellow-red lights over and over and over. I don’t know what they did differently in Fargo but it was just bizarre. Maybe the yellow lights were shorter.
Something I will say that I’ve found true. Drivers in urban areas with god-awful interstate exchanges let you in. Drivers in less populated areas, no matter how bad the traffic, don’t.
That said, before they expanded I-80 in Richmond, anytime I drove would be a religious experience as first I prayed for a miracle all the way down the on-ramp and then praised the Lord my God for getting me on the freeway safely. And I’m not just saying that. Those were *sincere* prayers.
It was bad in New Orleans even before Katrina. Now it’s even worse. Natives aside, tourist drivers here have special problems as they expect the city to be laid out in a logical way according to the compass points. It isn’t, it curves to match the bend of the river, and telling someone to drive, say, west isn’t going to hold for more than ten blocks. When I got back in December the tourists were gone but had been replaced by contractors from around the entire country. This was worse because they didn’t just stick to the tourist areas, they were getting lost everywhere. (They’re finally learning.)
Then there’s the roads. Before they repaved it a few years ago I used to say that driving on Tchoupitoulas by the river was like being a river pilot in Mark Twain’s day. Like the river’s shoals and sandbars, the size, shape, and depth of the potholes were in constant flux, and you had to keep a wary eye out or you’d break an axle.
In the heavily flooded Broadmoor area, one couple got so fed up with an enormous pothole, one they’d been dealing with since six months before Katrina, that they turned it into a wildlife refuge. It’s true.
Stephen,
While I have driven much of the rest of Colorado, I can’t claim experience with Colorado Springs specifically.
But the worst Texas Suburban, drunk New Mexico Indian in a clapped out pickup truck, deranged West Virginia hillbilly in a Concord or Grand Am cannot compare to the sheer, irrational death wish of ANY Massachusetts driver, especially the dreaded Volvo.
Heck, any vehicle with more than one wheel is rude, clueless, out of control and unpredictably dangerous anywhere in Massachusetts, especially in the eastern half. Good luck with the rotaries, and hope that the cops don’t hit you, they are as bad as the rest of the populace.
I feel your pain, but things could be worse.
I could be wrong, but I think in Chicago the car entering the freeway has a right of way, and the cars already on the freeway have to look out for them. quite sensible.
It first dawned on me to move away from Atlanta after my second hit & run crash on a motorcycle within a year. It took several more years for the conviction to solidify, but it all started with the traffic around that town. It was making me a sociopath. They’re all idiots, down there.
Atlanta is the east coast’s answer to L.A. now.
That traffic-light changer sparked an idea. Why not give everyone one of those? The lights could have a system to note the number of signals coming from one direction, keep the light green in that direction until the number of those cars falls below the number of signals coming from the crossing street, then turn green for them. Traffic democracy! Until someone hacks THAT system!
Hey, we can’t fix I 25! It would be bad for (my) business!
My oldest daughter just got her driver’s license, and I am truly afraid of her dirving on that death trap.
I have moved here to Colorado Springs last November and the drivers here do not compare to the drivers in Riyadh KSA. The Saudis follow the
Duane: The difference is that having a dummy in the passenger seat affects nobody (except someone else trying to use the HOV lane – which I can see not caring about, since HOV lanes are vile and evil, and at worst all it does is make them as slow as they’d be if they weren’t HOV lanes… while letting the non-HOV lanes speed up a bit towards where they’d be if all the lanes were normal)…
But his “light changer” does affect other people; namely everyone else on every cross street, who has a sudden, out-of-sequence change of light to deal with.
(Then there’s the matter of the Categorical Imperative, if we want to bust out the Kant. If everyone had a dummy in the seat for HOV lane use, the effect would merely be to make the HOV lane exactly like a normal lane. (As they should always have been in any decent, God-fearing place!)
The effect of universal adoption of the light-changer, however, would be to make all traffic come to a standstill as everyone tried to give their own direction priority. There’s a reason that stuff’s illegal, and in this case it’s even a good reason.)
My take for years has been that Colorado may not have the *worst* drivers (those in the Phillipines were the worst ones I’ve run across, although I’ve seen pretty bad ones here, including a taxi that turned left in front of me from the lane to my right), but that it certainly has the most *discourteous* drivers I’ve run across.
Long ago, when my commute to Longmont went north from Broomfield via what was, at the time, a 2-lane country road with highway-level speed limits, I was part of a long line of cars stuck behind a piece of farm machinery doing 15 mph.
Near the Alexander Dawson school, there is a small hill, at which there was a passing lane if you were climbing. The first car in line pulled out from behind the farm equipment, then stayed even with it for the duration of the climbing lane before speeding up to pull in front of it.
Made me wish that Gallagher’s humorous suggestion about driving had been implemented. (Every driver gets a dart gun, and when someone pisses you off, you shoot a dart into their trunk. When the police see someone with too many darts in their trunk, they give them a ticket for being an asshole.)
The ‘turn signal tells the other driver to cut you off’ description is absolutely correct. It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved here, and it’s never changed in 25 years.
The first bumper sticker I saw a lot of after moving here was “Don’t Californicate Colorado,” but I think it had a larger meaning than just driving styles.
I guess you have never been in South Florida, with its legions of 4 foot tall blind 97 year old women driving huge Cadillac.
The lights on academy ARE timed, but for 140mph. Obviously the zoomies got both naming rights and timing. In my rx7 me and a foxbody 5.0 made it from platte to woodmen in about 3 minutes, which wasn’t the point, we were looking for stop lights
.
Wow, this is a lot of comments about bad drivers around the world!
I’ve made the drive from Ft. Collins south on 25 through the Springs (heading to Canon City area for sport climbing) on several Friday nights, and no, it’s not any fun. I agree that the Springs has the worst drivers in the state, and it has the worst section of I-25 in the state. And none of the roads or traffic get any better if you have to exit the interstate for gas or groceries or any other reason.
Denver is bad. Boulder is bad. Longmont sucks. I’d say the Fort has the best traffic on the Front Range, but I just found out yesterday that this incredibly annoying closure of two major roads near my house is going to last until October! Ugh.
Thank goodness there are good bike paths and trails everywhere out here. I’m not going to get to Canon City on my bike, but at least I don’t have to sit in traffic on sunny afternoons.
Thanks for the chance to vent Stephen!
I’ve driven all over the west and some in Europe. I live in Colorado (58 mile roundtrip commute from Thornton to Gunbarrel). Colorado, as a state, isn’t so much worse than lots of other places.
Colorado Springs, OTOH, is pretty awful. IME, the only place in-state that is even comparable is Grand Junction.
That said, Phoenix metro (Mesa/Tempe/Chandler/Gilbert in specific) is worse. The mix of college-age students and 85-year-old snowbirds with extremely rapid population growth is especially unfortunate. Las Vegas is also pretty bad, but not in Phoenix’s league.
Back in 2003 my wife and I took our travel trailer on our first trip from NJ to Colorado Springs.(Did you know Kansas is uphill every mile from east to west on I-40?) I made a tactical error of taking a shortcut off I-40 directly to CS and then in turning onto Academy as we headed north to Monument and our reserved campground.
We made it through to I-25 safely and found that under construction. Sections of it still were when we went back in ’05.
I must say that with it’s combination of extra wide (6 to 8 lane) roads and only I-25 as a north-south route from CS to Denver…well, it was an adventure.
BTW, it was amazing to see the changes in just those two years. In ’05 we came in through Castle Rock and drove south to Monument. Nothing but McMansions going up.
Colorado has the worst drivers in America.
This is a grievous lie. California and Massachusetts have the worst drivers in America.
Try driving in any city in India. THAT will put the fear of God in you. First time I drove in US, it was a shock to my system: well marked lanes, people driving within lanes, lights that work, people obeying them, turn signals on cars, people heeding them, hearing a horn once in a while, rather than thousands of horns every second, policemen fining errant drivers, rather than fleecing everybody, not having to share the road with horse-carts, bicycles, stray cows, stray dogs, stray goats and smoke belching three wheeled vehicles. I tell you guys, this country IS a paradise on earth. You have NOTHING to complain about!
I soooo agree with you about the ridiculous lights in the Springs. Forget Academy, why the heck are the lights downtown timed for 40 mph? And the little-used side streets that have 2-minute light cycles? And the countdown timers that don’t change the light until 20 seconds after the timer reaches zero? It’s completely insane. It’s like the planners have never visited a real city where these things are, you know, planned.
I don’t know that the drivers here are any worse than Arizona or Florida, though. I like Californians — if they hit you, they damn well meant to.
Colorado (or at least front range) drivers have been the worst since I started driving in the 60s.
Vancouver, British Columbia. Terrifying; death is the *easy* way out.
Tushar- I know what you’re talking about…the traffic in Cairo is exactly like you describe, except with less police involvement. Scary at first, but almost seems fun when you get used to it.
My complaints of Colorado drivers are the red light runners in Denver and the occasional aggressive drivers on I25.
Other US cities I have not liked driving in:
Anchorage
Minneapolis
Seattle
Houston
Sacramento
“The first bumper sticker I saw a lot of after moving here was “Don’t Californicate Colorado,” but I think it had a larger meaning than just driving styles.”
I think I remember that from 1972 or there abouts. It can’t have been much later.
I mentioned my Colorado driving experience earlier, upthread, I’ll add that a few places (Woodland Park esp, maybe into CS) seemed to have a lot of drivers visibly under the influence (as in staggering out of a bar into their cars and heading off into glory).
And, Colorado had absolutely the most confusing city I’ve _ever_ driven in, Pueblo. I could swear that the roads move around when you’re not looking there. I was never able to take the same route twice and got lost for half an hour on what should have been an around the corner errand.
Huh. I was in CO Springs on business on two separate occasions, and I didn’t have a lick of trouble with the traffic. I felt right at home!
(BTW, I really liked CO Springs as a city. I have a thing for Victorian houses.)
I’ve never been as scared as I was in Montreal, Quebec. Terrified.
I learned to drive in New York, which means I’m very aggressive. Of all the major cities I’ve driven in (which include NYC and surrounding tri-state area; Syracuse, NY; Rochester, NY; Buffalo, NY; Halifax, NS; Toronto, ON; the entire East Coast; Atlanta, GA; Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, FL; New Orleans, LA; and many more), Miami and Orlando are tied for my #1 position of worst drivers.
Part of the problem is Florida Black Ice (which happens when it rains, and it rains every afternoon in the summer). Tourists just can’t deal with the slick roads we get here. Sherlock is right, Orlando is terribly lacking in signage. And the roads change names every few blocks (literally). This is not an easy city to navigate.
I wasn’t of driving age when I lived in Aurora and Littleton, CO, so I can’t speak of the driving conditions. But I remember always hearing the traffic reports and the favorite phrase was always “spectator slowdown”.
When I said that Orlando was the worst, I thought we were talking about US cities, if you want to add foreign countries to the mix then I would have to go with Colombia, South America. In the city of Barranquilla, there are very few signs and lights, which is fine since no one obeys them anyway. The streets are the all in very poor shape, cracked and potholes everywhere. the lines in the road mean nothing as the amount of taffic lanes depends on how many cars and motorcycles can fit. The right of way belongs to the biggest car, buses and taxis pull out without caring if there is anyone coming, getting on the bus is a ‘catch it if you can and jump on while it’s moving’ adventure. Cross the street at your own risk, traffic will not stop for you. On a taxi trip from Barranquilla to Cartagena, the driver was doing over 100 kph on a two lane road in very poor shape and that had several parts where it was washed out to be only one lane and a long steep drop was on the other side. Talk about terrifying! This is driving at it’s most primal and while there are probably other third world countries that have the same kind of driving, I’m sure it can’t get any worse.
Have you noticed nobody has a clue what merge means here?
Other US cities I have not liked driving in:
[...]
Seattle
[...]
…aw, c’mon. Mixing up what side the freeway ramps are on keeps things ‘interesting’, especially for the tourists.
It seems none of you have driven in Rhode Island.
Imagine a Special Olympics of Boston drivers, and you’re close.
Worst are the expatriate Californians. They come out here in their giant SUVs and no experience with winter weather.
When they get into the inevitable wreck, slap on a couple of extra points onto their driving record.
Fellow Coloradan, and so far you’re missing a major category of the worst drivers we’ve got around Boulder/Longmont:
New college students from out of state who have apparently never seen weather before.
I commute about 20 minutes from Longmont to the CU-Boulder campus each way, each day. If it is anything but perfectly sunny, my commute time doubles in length, with the bulk of that time coming within a mile of campus.
Snow is a miraculous wonder to these students, who have no clue how their braking systems work on wet roads. Nor are they familiar with the term “following distance,” especially in conjunction with the term “appropriate.”
In the states the worse I saw was the I-4 Corridor from Tampa to Orlando. If it wasn’t under construction (which it always was) there were constant trailer jackknifes plus tourists from all over the world driving the way they drive in their home state or country. Hell, I’ve seen folks slam on the brakes to take a pic of a Palm Tree.
Outside of the country, BANGALORE or MUMBAI hands down…
I moved to Colorado (Parker, 20 miles SE of downtown Denver) about 9 months ago; I haven’t found the drivers here to be particularly bad, though that may be due to the fact that I moved here from Washington DC.
I’ve lived (and driven) in California (San Diego and Bay Area), Utah, Texas, Virginia (northern), Maryland (southern), Washington DC (yep, right in the District), Colorado, and Costa Rica. Leaving aside Costa Rica (a whole different world of driving), I’ve found that people in all those other places claim they have the worst drivers. Utah is the only place I’ve found that tends to live up (or down) to that.
On the other hand, I haven’t lived or driven in Colorado Springs. ..fritz..
Rio Grande Valley area of Texas. You have your 90 year old retirees driving 20 under the speed limit, legally blind, like Florida. You have your recent immigrants who are used to driving in Mexico which (like most third-world locales) has no particularly adequate enforcement of what traffic laws there are. They are going 20 OVER the speed limit, and pay little attention to such details as red lights, lane lines, or exit ramps. The only folks going the speed limit are lost tourists, with all that that entails.
There literally is no safe speed – you are always either overtaking, being overtaken, or both, at 20 miles an hour differential – and you are probably passing grandma who’s in the left lane with her right blinker on (50-50 she actually moves over either into or directly in front of you while you pass on the right) while Speedy Gonzales passes you via the entrance ramp. I saw more dinged-up cars down there than I ever have anywhere, ever.
I think we need to distinguish between discourteous drivers and drivers who simply don’t obey traffic laws.
I’ve driven all over the US, in Israel and in South America.
For the latter (law breaking), I’ve found none worse than those in Nevada. They seem to have complete, and utter, disdain for the law.
For the former, it’s a tossup between California, especially Los Angeles, and Israel. The most common trait amongst Californians is they don’t signal, they just change lanes, often for no particular reason. They invented rolling stops for right on red. This is all exacerbated by a mish-mash of cultures so there isn’t a consistant madness (like in New York, Chicago or Israel.)
The most insane driving I’ve witnessed is Israel. They never seem to use rear view mirrors. I can’t count the number of times, I saw people get into their car and just back up without looking in their mirror. But, since everyone was just as insane, it appeared to perversely work. (I understand the accident rate in Israel is astronomically high, but I never saw a traffic accident while there.)
Fort Myers was hell, eh? It’s still pretty bad, though 75 helped the 41 traffic a bit.
We have drivers from all over the country (for that matter, all over the world) – and each one of them drives with habits picked up in their home town.
And a driver from a place where you wait to let everyone run the red (and who runs it themselves) is NOT compatible with someone who drives the pedal to the metal the microsecond the light turns green.
Come drive in Florida! It’s an adventure.
The worst drivers in the world are most definitely…
immediately in front of you when you need to be somewhere other than stuck in traffic. And therein lies the problem, because we will invariably be in front of someone else, in a just as much of a hurry.
Kathy K, for a year or so I had a 30 mile (one way) commute from Punta Gorda to college parkway (before I-75 opened up). I quickly learned to try to get through it before 7:30 when the real crazies started showing up. Going back wasn’t so much of a problem as it would be mostly slow stop and go from a little north of the Edison mall to the bridge (there was also an hour and a half from around 12:30 to 2:00 that wasn’t too bad).
Now I live in Poland where I don’t have to drive and am happy not to as there are three primary rules:
1) always look straight ahead, never to the sides or in back,
2) if you think you can go 10 mph faster, it is your moral duty to do so,
3) traffic lights and traffic signs are mere suggestions
I’ve driven in Boston, Denver, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, DC, St. Louis, Toronto and all points between same.
Boston is bad, with its cabbies going full blast everywhere and its drivers a bit on the lacksidasical side at high speed.
Buffalo has a bad day with the first snow and then everyone remembers driving skills again. That said most of the roads are bad with potholes to the point the joke is: ‘How can you tell he was drunk? He was driving *straight* down Kensington.’ You learn to play artful dodgem with the pot holes and trying to think of what the other guy is doing before he does it. Fun, but not usually lethal.
Denver is so-so, with winter driving skills spotty compared to Buffalo. The folks there depend way too much on ‘the great solar snow plough’. The mousetrap there is awful (or was, at least… I believe it was scheduled for replacement).
Now living in NoVA, I will attest to the worst drivers of all being embassy staff with immunity from the laws. Many of them appear to come from places without *roads*. I have personally witnessed one actually STOP on the beltway and then BACKUP against 4 lanes of traffic for a half-mile to get to a missed exit.
Add in the transient military, students from all over, and the rest of the foreign entourage and the motorcades and such: it is abominable. And in VA indicators are a ‘courtesy’ but not mandatory for anything. U-turns *except* in areas marked otherwise… even on 4 lane busy highways.
You learn to give *all* red,white and blue diplomatic plates wide, wide berths or get past them as fast as possible. And winter is always a joy when there is ice or snow on the ground, no winter driving skills at all. In theory you don’t need them for such short stays of bad weather as is seen here… until a real storm hits, then everything slows to an absolute crawl after the first day.
Now that my personal driving days are over, these are but memories as I am now that least respected of all beings: passenger.
If you want a little extra elbow room in Denver traffic, just bolt on a Wyoming License Plate. It’s amazing how effective it can be.
great description of the awful CO Springs drivers. We were there 4 years, just left last year. Before that we were in Jersey. I’ve driven in NYC, Philly, Chicago. CO Springs is definitely the worst we’ve ever seen.
I cannot believe you noticed that too. It it the too slow to go and the too fast for sanity crowd. Never understanding condition, but you were right. At least in CA, cops were doing 80 in the slow lane looking for the backups and the mess that is “I gotta hold traffic back attitude” croud.
All limits are broken to the point where someone is killed.
Colorado was one of the rare places to drive. It was like asking a bartender for a martini and him giving you a drink on the rocks. Drivers did not connect. Strange that I can drive fast and uninterrupted in some places and yet remember how bad it was in colorado.
I moved to CO from MD 6 yrs ago. I had driven all my adult life in the Washington DC metro area, rated 2nd worst traffic nationwide, so I know whereof I speak.
Colorado drivers are some of the worst I’ve seen. Three things they do that drive me nuts and make me want to climb a tall tower with a 30/06 and footlocker full of ammo:
1)The last second right turn from the center or left lane (and other combinations similar)
2)Waiting 5 seconds after the light turns green before pulling away at a pace slightly slower than the average glacier.
3)Generally driving 10mph under the speed limit in the left lane on Kipling, Wadsworth, &c.