Since moving to New York, I have had a theory that New York drivers are just
bad at driving. At times I amend this theory out of politeness to say that they
are arrogant and impatient drivers. But at the end of the day this is not only
just untrue, but if it were, it would still make them bad drivers.
It is a well understood idea in both New York and Pennsylvania that New Jersey drivers are terrible. They drive around cluelessly, but it's not necessarily their fault. It's upbringing. As we all know, you're not allowed to pump your own gas in New Jersey. Pumping gas is not only one of the more simple aspects of learning about a car when you're young, it's also a part of the foundation of learning. When these New Jersey-ans never learn how to pump gas, there is a domino effect. They never learn how to signal, or use a four way stop-sign properly, let alone merging or parallel parking.
While doing research for this, I came across some interesting statistics. First that neither New York nor New Jersey were in the top ten for states you would most likely die in while in a car. The top states were all more rural areas like Mississippi, Montana, and Alabama.
Admittedly I ran numbers to see how my native Pennsylvania fared against what I am claiming is inferior driving states, and Pennsylvania was ranked third when put again New Jersey and New York. However, when diving into the numbers more deeply, and this is true, when you separate the vehicular fatalities by rural and urban driving, there is a massive disparity. First, that Pennsylvania goes from third to first, which means that PA urban and suburban drivers are not only superior to their rural counterparts, but that they are also better than New York and New Jersey urban drivers. This makes sense for reasons I'll get into in a minute.
However, one blaring statistic stands out. In almost all cases in this country, urban drivers are better at staying alive behind the wheel than rural drivers. This may have to do with the constant need for surveying ones surroundings while driving in more densely populated areas. Rural drivers perhaps are "falling asleep at the wheel" maybe not literally, but without the perceived constant need for alertness, they fall victim to more vehicular deaths per capita. This is true in almost all places except New Jersey. It seems that their rural population die lest often behind the wheel than their urban counterparts. The only other states that suffered this strange statistical outlier were Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. It goes against logic, which is completely logical when we are talking about New Jersey and parts of New England, because they themselves are also crazy.
***
As for New York, most specifically the lower counties in the state: The city, Long Island, Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties, they may not kill each other in cars as often as New Jersey or Pennsylvania, but that's because you can't drive in these areas without your knuckles white.
If you were born in New York city, you most likely never learned to drive. You took the subways everywhere (they are amazing, the best in the world) and never needed to learn. So when you get behind a wheel, you're terrible. For those lucky, or unfortunate enough, to learn to drive, and need to drive, the population density is so out of control that there is no idea of "stay right pass left." If you live and drive in the city, polite driving is thrown out the window out of necessity, which I understand. However, when it's transferred to the suburbs, that style of driving is still the norm but less necessary. It leads to a population that doesn't signal, will pull out onto streets without any care for the car already coming down the street, they don't pull over for ambulances, or fighter-fighters trying to get through to save lives. They don't know how to merge, let alone how to use a four way stop-sign properly. And again, forget about "stay right pass left." This last point became abundantly clear, not just to me, but to Measy while he and I and his buddy Brandon were on a road trip last week. Every car we found in the left hand land on I-95 who refused (or didn't know any better) to get into the right hand lane when someone is trying to get by, were of New York plates. I'm not joking: It was eerie how consistent it became.
Because less New Yorkers per capita (compared to New Jersey and Pennsylvania) die in a car does not make them better drivers, it's more that just so many of their population don't even drive. Again, they are on subways and buses. However, those who do drive are terrible at it.
I'm going to tell you a secret: I have a list of blog post ideas saved to my computer. Some of which I never used. These posts usually have a short shelf life. There's no point in writing about the adventures I had six months ago down in the city. (Let's be honest, there's not much of a point to write about it a day after it happened). This list has 128 ideas for posts. Many of these ideas I have already used, however idea number 21, and 22 are not crossed off the list. They are "NY shitty drivers" and "NY shitty roads." This means I probably put this on my list in the fall of 2010 and I'm finally getting around to writing about it.
As for the shitty roads, I think it again is due to population. There is so much infrastructure, so many buses, trains, roads, and bridges, that when it comes to say, filling in a slew of potholes, or repairing a small local bridge with something other than plywood, it doesn't get done because people are busy making the trains run on time and insuring that the Tappan Zee Bridge doesn't fall down while people are driving across it. Despite my empathy for the NYDOT, I still yell and curse when my wheels feel like their falling off my car any time I drive anywhere. And if the Tappan Zee Bridge ever does collapse, call me and leave me a voice mail if I don't answer. I'm on that thing at least a couple times a week.
It is a well understood idea in both New York and Pennsylvania that New Jersey drivers are terrible. They drive around cluelessly, but it's not necessarily their fault. It's upbringing. As we all know, you're not allowed to pump your own gas in New Jersey. Pumping gas is not only one of the more simple aspects of learning about a car when you're young, it's also a part of the foundation of learning. When these New Jersey-ans never learn how to pump gas, there is a domino effect. They never learn how to signal, or use a four way stop-sign properly, let alone merging or parallel parking.
While doing research for this, I came across some interesting statistics. First that neither New York nor New Jersey were in the top ten for states you would most likely die in while in a car. The top states were all more rural areas like Mississippi, Montana, and Alabama.
Admittedly I ran numbers to see how my native Pennsylvania fared against what I am claiming is inferior driving states, and Pennsylvania was ranked third when put again New Jersey and New York. However, when diving into the numbers more deeply, and this is true, when you separate the vehicular fatalities by rural and urban driving, there is a massive disparity. First, that Pennsylvania goes from third to first, which means that PA urban and suburban drivers are not only superior to their rural counterparts, but that they are also better than New York and New Jersey urban drivers. This makes sense for reasons I'll get into in a minute.
However, one blaring statistic stands out. In almost all cases in this country, urban drivers are better at staying alive behind the wheel than rural drivers. This may have to do with the constant need for surveying ones surroundings while driving in more densely populated areas. Rural drivers perhaps are "falling asleep at the wheel" maybe not literally, but without the perceived constant need for alertness, they fall victim to more vehicular deaths per capita. This is true in almost all places except New Jersey. It seems that their rural population die lest often behind the wheel than their urban counterparts. The only other states that suffered this strange statistical outlier were Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. It goes against logic, which is completely logical when we are talking about New Jersey and parts of New England, because they themselves are also crazy.
***
As for New York, most specifically the lower counties in the state: The city, Long Island, Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties, they may not kill each other in cars as often as New Jersey or Pennsylvania, but that's because you can't drive in these areas without your knuckles white.
If you were born in New York city, you most likely never learned to drive. You took the subways everywhere (they are amazing, the best in the world) and never needed to learn. So when you get behind a wheel, you're terrible. For those lucky, or unfortunate enough, to learn to drive, and need to drive, the population density is so out of control that there is no idea of "stay right pass left." If you live and drive in the city, polite driving is thrown out the window out of necessity, which I understand. However, when it's transferred to the suburbs, that style of driving is still the norm but less necessary. It leads to a population that doesn't signal, will pull out onto streets without any care for the car already coming down the street, they don't pull over for ambulances, or fighter-fighters trying to get through to save lives. They don't know how to merge, let alone how to use a four way stop-sign properly. And again, forget about "stay right pass left." This last point became abundantly clear, not just to me, but to Measy while he and I and his buddy Brandon were on a road trip last week. Every car we found in the left hand land on I-95 who refused (or didn't know any better) to get into the right hand lane when someone is trying to get by, were of New York plates. I'm not joking: It was eerie how consistent it became.
Because less New Yorkers per capita (compared to New Jersey and Pennsylvania) die in a car does not make them better drivers, it's more that just so many of their population don't even drive. Again, they are on subways and buses. However, those who do drive are terrible at it.
I'm going to tell you a secret: I have a list of blog post ideas saved to my computer. Some of which I never used. These posts usually have a short shelf life. There's no point in writing about the adventures I had six months ago down in the city. (Let's be honest, there's not much of a point to write about it a day after it happened). This list has 128 ideas for posts. Many of these ideas I have already used, however idea number 21, and 22 are not crossed off the list. They are "NY shitty drivers" and "NY shitty roads." This means I probably put this on my list in the fall of 2010 and I'm finally getting around to writing about it.
As for the shitty roads, I think it again is due to population. There is so much infrastructure, so many buses, trains, roads, and bridges, that when it comes to say, filling in a slew of potholes, or repairing a small local bridge with something other than plywood, it doesn't get done because people are busy making the trains run on time and insuring that the Tappan Zee Bridge doesn't fall down while people are driving across it. Despite my empathy for the NYDOT, I still yell and curse when my wheels feel like their falling off my car any time I drive anywhere. And if the Tappan Zee Bridge ever does collapse, call me and leave me a voice mail if I don't answer. I'm on that thing at least a couple times a week.
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