Poll Center: Who Has the Worst Drivers?

A NEW STUDY shows that the Washington area suffers from heightened levels of road rage. That seems to state the obvious. Anyone who has ventured out on the roads knows this very well. A combination of congested roads, short tempers and busy lives can make a trip on the Orange Line during the morning rush seem sane.

According to the Current newspaper, Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham said the following in March at a meeting of the Kalorama Citizens Association:

Our roadways have historically served the crazy people from Maryland — They're so pent up. They're going to have to start driving safely.

Drivers from Maryland crazy, pent up? Might Virginia drivers be slow, confused and easily agitated? And what about District drivers? Could they be aggressive, crafty speed demons?

These studies often stir up our metropolitan assumptions about drivers who hail from one side of the District line or across the Potomac. There's no good way to measure the characteristics that makes a class of drivers from a certain jurisdiction worse or better than another. But that isn't stopping us ...

For today's Poll Center question, we ask: Who has the worst drivers in the D.C area? Go vote (and comment) here and see how your fellow commuters voted, station by station, line by line.

To give you some different perspectives, Free Ride has assembled a distinguished panel of local transportation pundits (from the Express newsroom) to sound off on where the area's worst drivers hail from: Virginia, Maryland or the District.

Clinton Yates
Local Editor, Express
Resident of the D.C. border region with Silver Spring, D.C. native (from a family of cab drivers)

D.C. drivers are the worst drivers but for all the wrong reasons: they're generally the only ones who know where they're going. Unlike our counterparts in outlying states, we don't get confused by diagonal avenues or large roundabout circles.

I drive fast and accurately, because I know I'm going the right way. When I'm in Maryland, I drive slow. When I'm in Virginia, I get lost. But inside the District line, I'm on my home turf, so look out.

If four D.C. drivers are at a stop sign, and no one signals, but all plan on turning, everyone still knows where the others are going. If you insert one outsider into that mix, you've got an immediate accident. I can't defend that — it's unsafe.

If suburban drivers gave D.C. vehicles the respect they deserve, we wouldn't have to resort to guerilla methods to take back our streets. But until then, we'll continue to drive like predators — unless of course, they start paying tolls.

Matt Swenson
News Editor, Express
Virginia resident, D.C./Maryland native

Sitting in a car on Arlington Road in Bethesda, a fire truck's siren can be heard but no one moves. Welcome to life on Maryland's streets, an area full of self-entitled drivers who think they own the road. Why not, they own almost everything else — or at least the Montgomery Country residents do.

If not deliberately self-involved, the drivers are on their cell phones in their Chrysler minivans are too busy saving the world to behave like reasonable humans behind the wheel.

Distracted by a flurry of causes and ideals, the drivers can't bother with small details like, say, merging. A fender-bender in the rear-view mirror is of little consequence if they make that soccer game on time. You don't need to go to the zoo if you park in Maryland's public garages. The drivers are real animals there, willing to steal a spot at a moment's notice. It's me, me, me in merry Maryland.

Chris Mincher
Washington AV Club Editor, The Onion
Virginia resident, Maryland native

Traveling on a Virginian highway is like pouring a box of peppercorn through a coffee straw, as moms maneuver minivans into HOV lanes and slow to speeds appropriate for mowing a lawn.

Virginians also have a backward approach to changing streets: First, turn and drive, THEN determine if they are headed the wrong way on a one-way road. Virginians don't understand consecutively numbered streets, or consecutively alphabetized streets, or that slowing to 3 mph won't make a parking space magically appear alongside them.

Traffic signs are regarded as invitations to partly turn across traffic, stop, and read the sign again. I would sooner entrust Helen Keller with piloting a space shuttle through re-entry than a Virginian with operating a golf cart down a sidewalk.

» AGREE OR DISAGREE with our panel? Leave your thoughts in comments.

Photo by Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Post

Posted By Michael Grass at 1:38 AM on May 16, 2007 Tagged in Free Ride , Maryland , News , The District , Transit , Virginia

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