Regional driving behaviors

[wagonman76]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

We gots the opposite of that.

It's common for hicks in pickups to stop right in the middle of the street/road when they see a fellow hick they want to talk to. Yup- don't even pull over to the side- smack dab in the middle.

Stroll through a parking lot here in the winter. It is FILLED with running vehicles. They run for long periods of time. Gee it must be hard work to hand crank those big V8s. What? All you have to do is turn a key? Who knew!

Sometimes there is somebody sitting in them. Smokers on break from work run out to the parking lot and sit in their idling cars for the whole break. Lunch time too. Yeah.

Not that our drivers ain't healthy. They must eat a lot of carrots! Well I don't know, they must have exceptional night vision here; I've never seen a town where so many drive around at night with the lights off.

They're prescient too. No need to use the turn signals, ever. Well, maybe once in a while... after yer already haff-way into the turn.

Getting back to parking lots- gotta love the ones that have rows where the spots are somewhat diagonal. When the paint lines are covered with snow the lines of cars... er, I mean pickups and suvs- get pretty funky. Appears to me there is a serious mass depth perception problem here. Ain't a whole lot better in the summer when the lines are visible.

P.S. another classic maneuver is: when you go to yer friend's house, do not get out and ring the doorbell. Lay on the horn until they FINALLY come out.

^Thats the locals here. Except not so much running cars in the big parking lots, but at every gas station at least half of them are still running. The lunch thing I see all the time. And the pickups talking in the middle of the road, and losing parts when they're not stopped.

Then we got the people flooding up here from the big cities like Detroit, Chicago, etc. who are generally aggressive speed demons with a nasty attitude. Many times they outnumber us.

A tough combination.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

I haven't been driving much here this winter, but as a pedestrian I can relate one suprising thing: drivers STOP and let you cross any road or intersection without having to play chicken first. They're unbelievably courteous to pedestrians.

And I don't mean just at intersections. Turn to cross a street in the middle of the block, and most drivers would stop and wave you across.

That's one of the things that struck me and my sister when we were biking in Nova Scotia. I've liked Halifax ever since...

Back to cars in parking lots. In NC, in the middle of a summer heat wave, in every single parking lot you see someone talking with their door open, engine running and A/C blasting. Or doing something around the car with the door open. And you listen to that engine whining and sweating and panting. And you just want to walk over there, turn off the engine and slam the door shut. Hopefully with the keys inside.
I've gotta go to some aggresion therapy or something

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

That's one of the things that struck me and my sister when we were biking in Nova Scotia.

Funny choice of language!

You probably went through (or past) Lunenburg (where I am now) if you did the Lighthouse Route. Or maybe you were on Cape Breton doing the Cabot Trail. (I haven't been on Cape Breton yet.)

[tasdrouille]

Maybe someone from the western part of Canada can chime in, but I thought it's pretty common place to cede to pedestrians crossing the street at any time.

I try to do it here myself whenever I see someone waiting to cross on the side of the road. I often get surprised looks, and honks from behind.

[McTimson]

If you go on a highway from New York into New Jersey, or the other way, you can usually notice a HUGE difference in speeds. I think it has more to do with there not being as many NJ police on the highway, but once you get into NY, everybody drops down to maybe 10MPH over the speed limit, instead of the 20-30 over that they were doing before.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by tasdrouille

Maybe someone from the western part of Canada can chime in, but I thought it's pretty common place to cede to pedestrians crossing the street at any time.

I try to do it here myself whenever I see someone waiting to cross on the side of the road. I often get surprised looks, and honks from behind.

As a pedestrian, I try to time my crossing so cars don't have to stop for me. It's because I know how much stopping and accelerating costs, energywise, and I don't want someone to waste fuel just for little old me. I sometimes stand next to the road, pretending to look the other way, so that the last car in a line doesn't decide to stop and let me by, if I can cross after he passes.
Of course, there are places where waiting won't get you anywhere before 2am.

[Matt Herring]

Originally Posted by RH77

No offense to the fine people of Houston, Texas (or any other municipality in this post), but...

LOOK OUT! Houston is up there in my Top 10 US/Canada worst places to drive. Aside from constantly feeding the toll-road system, the drivers are at full-throttle, 24/7/365.

It's one of the only places I've been passed on the right shoulder -- on a 4-lane highway! It's pandemonium.

I'm going out on a limb here, but the hardest places to drive "efficiently" are...

1. Boston
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Chicago
4. Los Angeles
5. Vancouver, BC
6. Seattle / Tacoma
7. Houston
8. Dallas / Ft. Worth Metro
9. San Antonio and St. Louis (tie)
10. Denver

RH77

I can attest to the ridiculous driving habits in Boston, MA. I've lived here for over 7 years and have never (and I mean never) encountered some of the shenanigans on the road that I have here. Luckily, I live north of the city in a burb but drive into the city often.

When I visited the city before moving here a friend of mine was driving us around to take it all in and it was like Nascar. Nobody signals lane changes, the highway off ramps are often close to 90 degree turns, highways exit on both the left and the right frequently...took some getting used to.

The #1 thing I have adapted to with highway driving up here (usually during rush hour) is that the middle lane and right lane often get you to your destination quicker and more efficiently than the far left passing lane. So many dumb-dumbs up here insist in driving in the far left passing lane simply because they think they can go faster in that lane. I've found (on almost every occasion) that because so many cars pack into the far left passing lane that the middle and right lane (unless there is heavy on-ramp usage) have less cars in them and generally have steadier driving patterns (more ideal for hypermiling and avoiding frequent stops and starts).

I've driven in DC before and there certainly are alot of cars on the road but not near the congestion as Boston with its narrow city streets. Dallas and Houston were like racetracks too but because they have a more complex highway system it seemed like there was alot more room to maneuver on the highway. Houston seemed like one big, neverending highway around the city!