Dash Cam Hilariously Highlights How Bad Massachusetts Drivers Are
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[fragment number=1] Local Redditor “kibitzor’’ uploaded a dash-cam video of locally captured traffic faux pas. He titles the video “Massachusetts Drivers’’ and lets the malarky speak for itself. And it speaks…loudly.
In the 1:56 of footage, the camera catches local drivers cutting off traffic, running red lights, and darting across lane dividers to make a last-minute exit while the instrumental version of “Foux du fa fa’’ by Flight of the Conchords softly plays in the background.
Some of the incidents captured are frighteningly dangerous, others mind-numbingly frustrating, but none are surprising.
Instead of expressing outrage at the behaviors caught on film, commenters on the ensuing Reddit thread repeatedly remarked that these infractions aren’t even the most egregious crimes they’ve ever witnessed.
As MmmmapleSyrup wrote,
As bad as it can be, I’ll take driving in Boston over driving in the South any day. In Boston the general rule of driving seems to be “whatever you’re going to do, just do it and get it over with.’’ So I can predict that the asshole over in that lane is going to cut me off, but man, driving in the south where no one is in a hurry, or even sure of where they’re headed drives me insane.
Quickly, others jumped onto the topic, berating Baton Rouge and Washington DC drivers as the worst.
So is bad driving occurring nation-wide?
The answer seems to be that there are different kinds of bad driving going on.
In the complaints against other cities, it’s easy to see why out-of-towners peg Bostonians as overly-aggressive drivers. The Reddit masses concluded that there is nothing worse than slow drivers who don’t know where they’re going, and that, thank goodness, Boston doesn’t have those. (Of course not! We tailgate anyone in front of us until they learn that the only way to drive is 15 mph over the speed limit.)
But while slow-moving Southerners may be irksome, Massachusetts is the state that hosts three localities labeled the worst driving cities in America. A recent Allstate study ranked three cities among the five worst driving cities in America, with Worcester and Boston coming in first and second, respectively.
While some Redditors blamed bad driving on tricky-to-navigate streets, evidence suggests it extends beyond that.
Studies indicate that this behavior is part of a cultural attitude. Insure.com and Travel+Leisure both ranked Boston amongst the top five cities of rudest drivers. Psychologists at the University of Michigan found that Boston ranked lowest on “strengths of heart’’ (aka kindness) out of all 50 United States.
We’re aggressive and unyielding, and we think we all think we know how to drive best-how often do you meet a Bostonian who admits to being a bad driver? Maybe it’s part nature, part nurture.
There are a whole slew of factors contributing to the behaviors seen in kibitzor’s video, but just a word of advice to all: if you’re going to try to pull off a last-minute lane change, at the very least use yah blinkah.
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