Northern NY (I’m talking about the *REAL* northern part, as in NOT freakin Orange and Westchester counties, but waaaaay up there well north of Albany!) drivers are actually very good drivers. We get a solid amount of winter weather and our roads are not straight for very long. If someone is going slower than the vehicles that caught up to them the locals will move to the shoulder (if there is one) or slow down a bit and wave the faster traffic past. Also, when stopped, waiting to turn left for example, locals will hug the centerline so others can get past. Tourists will hover on the white line with no turn signal, holding everyone up. And so forth. I LOVE Labor Day weekend because all the morons leave the Adirondacks for a while, til ski season hits...
Amen on Labor Day. It's become my favorite weekend of the year.
In terms of skill, I've found that drivers who
learned to drive in New York City or other big cities tend to be the best drivers. In terms of attitude, however, they tend to be pretty horrible, but not immutably so. They usually mellow out once they live in the country for a while and learn the social rules of driving here.
I learned to drive in Queens, a borough of New York City. My high school was on Queens Boulevard, where two out of every three vehicles was a truck or a bus; and I learned highway driving on the BQE and the LIE. Learning to drive in that environment results in developing excellent
skills, but not a good driving
attitude. The competitive aspect of driving in a big city results in driving that's too aggressive for less-developed venues.
Two specific examples of the difference are following distance and proximity comfort. All Downstate drivers tailgate. If you try to obey the three-second rule on the LIE, three cars will pull in front of you. The only way to maintain three seconds of space forward would be to drive backward. That's the first habit Downstate drivers have to break when they move.
Proximity comfort is another. Drivers who learned to drive in big cities are accustomed to having only inches between themselves and other cars. So, for example, if part of the roadway is blocked, whether or not remaining traffic in opposing lanes will continue moving is a function of whether the laws of physics allow for it. If that means that the vehicles have only an inch or two of space to their sides, that's fine. Up here, not so much. Drivers would rather stop and wait for oncoming vehicles to pass them than to pass them moving with less than a foot or so of space to the side.
In summary, a lot of it is context. "Good" drivers in any context are the ones with sufficient skill to safely operate their vehicles, and sufficient contextual awareness and attitude control to operate them in ways considered normal and appropriate in the context. When I visit The City, I drive like city people do because it's what's expected. When I drive where I live now, I drive like people here do.
As for states...
I've observed that people from Connecticut tend to drive either way over the speed limit or way under it. They rarely travel at or near the speed limit. But as a group, they also tend not to tailgate. When they can pass you, they may zoom by at 90 or 100 MPH. But they generally won't tailgate you.
People from Downstate and New Jersey
do tend to tailgate, but it's usually not to get you to move over. They may be perfectly content with the speed, so they won't pass you even when they have the opportunity. They're just used to tailgating. When they want you to move over, they're more likely to beep the horn, flash the headlights, and give you the middle finger.
People from the South tend to drive like they're lost, probably because most of them are.
People with Florida plates in particular are almost always retired snowbirds who are in no hurry to get anywhere, and their driving shows it. I often wonder if they're reminiscing about people who used to live along the road because they slow down in front of random houses and look at them, for no apparent reason.
People from Pennsylvania tend to be good drivers. Based on what I learned when my goddaughters started to drive, I'm inclined to think that their driver training requirements have something to do with that. New drivers in Pennsylvania have to get a physical to get a learner's permit. They also have to keep a log of their practice driving that includes 65 total hours of adult-supervised driving, divided into driving in daytime, nighttime, good weather, foul weather, and so forth. I don't know how strictly the requirements are enforced or how much falsification goes on; but on paper, their requirements are very thorough and would tend to produce good drivers.
Rich
