Thanks, everyone!

[urbpan]

Here's my highly unscientific analysis of my highly unscientific survey data:

People who have never been to Boston generally have no reaction to the phrase "Boston driver," except for "the people who drive in my city are nuts!"

People who have visited Boston but don't live there think that Boston drivers are nuts.

People who live in and around Boston perceive Boston drivers as nuts, and especially homicidal when it comes to interactions with bicyclists.

I'm surprised only that "Boston driver" isn't a well-known phrase synonymous with "crazy driver," but then again, I grew up only 80 miles from Boston. Pretty much everyone around had been to Boston at least once, and therefore fit into category 2 above. I'm not surprised that everyone thinks that drivers in their city are nuts. Every city I've been to has had horrible automobile traffic. In descending order of terror induced: London, Quito, Tijuana, San Jose (Costa Rica), Chicago, Boston, Rio De Janeiro, New York, San Francisco, Springfield (Massachusetts), San Diego.

The only place I've ever been where the motorists struck me as unusually courteous is Northhampton, Massachusetts.

In case you're wondering why I asked the question at all, a motorist on a boston community was complaining about scofflaw bicyclists (inappropriately, I thought, on a post about a bicycle advocacy meeting). I thought that being a Boston driver is the most fragile glass house that one can cast stones from, on traffic safety issues, anyway.

Comments

Boston Driver = Stressed Out

[(Anonymous)]

Having studied this subject intensely... I've come to the conclusion that Boston Drivers (and really all dangerous drivers operating any kind of vehicle, car, truck, bike, etc.) are dangerous mostly because they are stressed out for all manner of reasons. The pressure to be on time, to fit in, to provide for the family, to do what's expected of them, to answer the phone, to deal with the daily onslaught of bad news on the radio, etc. is just too much. This stress turns people into cornered animals, with nothing on the mind but "fight or flight". In this lizard brain state, you get irrational, aggressive, and easily frightened drivers. Put them in two ton killing machines and you've got a war zone on your streets.

On my visit to Portland, Oregon, an award winner for "bicycle friendliness" from the LAB, I was struck by:

1. The prevalence of piss poor, substandard segregated bicycle facilities (mostly in the form of very narrow door zone bike lanes running right up to right turn lanes that encourage cyclists to ride in the door zone and pass on the right, and other traffic to right hook the cyclists while making right turns).

2. The patience and respect that motorists and pedestrians had for the laws and other road users.

I decided that Portland, OR wasn't bike friendly because it had special bike facilities, but because it was just friendly in general!

Finally, to be honest, I rarely have problems with driving my bike in Boston proper. It's Cambridge and the suburbs where I'm threatened every couple of minutes by some bozo in an SUV who is so threatened by my presence that they try to consciously or subconsciously run me into the gutter. And, as far as the statistics show, Boston (Mass in general) has one of the lowest rates of serious traffic crashes (including fatalities) per capita in the country. Florida is the worst. I think it's because the locals in Boston learn to drive in this craziness, so they have great reflexes and good intuition, and can avoid a crash better than the average driver. It only gets really bad when the college freshpersons move in and try to drive mommy and daddy's car using only the knowledge they have from driving the 5 miles from home to high school to the mall in suburban hicksville!

-Turtle

[(Anonymous)]

you ain't seen nuttin' - go to paris, milan or the fast lane on the autobahn in a fiat lunchbox