The Worst Drivers in the Country are Exactly Where You'd Expect

LONG STORY SHORT
​In the words of Anakin Skywalker (probably): It's not just the Florida men, but the Florida women and the Florida children, too.

By Jason Clark

You think this is beautiful? This is a disaster!

Before I start this rant, I’ll offer a disclaimer: I’m from California. California has all sorts of bad drivers, plus a passive-aggressive style of road rage that’s unique to the state.* It’s got street racers going 100+ mph on the freeway in the middle of the night. It’s got assholes who try to cheat traffic by merging at the last possible second. And in the desert, it’s got people who think each neighborhoods’ 40-mph speed limit is 20 mph too low.
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All of this is to say that I am familiar with bad driving and am in no way trying to excuse the practices of my home state. But however bad it is in California, it’s nothing compared to where we’ve been lately.

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Florida. The state that has become a meme.

And, as it turns out, not unfairly.

We’ve never seen a stereotype reinforced as quickly and as often as we have in Florida. So far, it’s the only place we’ve visited on our travels and thought, “Huh, this kinda sucks.” I could look through my California-tinted glasses and make a long list of reasons for why that is, but right now, I’m concerned with just one: the drivers.

There is nowhere in the world I have felt more unsafe while driving.** Florida driving is disorganized chaos, mostly—I think—because of the convergence of two demographics:

1. Seniors. Florida has heaps of ‘em. Many elderly people retire here, and in my experience, they tend to drive slowly, sometimes even confusedly, which can make their driving unpredictable.
2. Party bros. Miami, in particular, is a well-known party town, but I admit that my inclusion of this demographic is mostly based on stereotype. In any case, I’ve seen way too many people driving insanely fast here, and for the sake of simplicity, I’ll call these drivers the party bros.

The result of this convergence? Seniors driving slowly and unpredictably (hopefully in the rightmost lanes) while party bros speed and weave erratically around traffic in whichever lane suits their taste. The rest of us are just trying not to get caught up in a wreck, matching the average speed of traffic at 10 mph above the speed limit. (We Californians have this in common with Floridians, at least.)

Essentially, the average driver has to put an outsize amount of faith in the party bros, trusting they won’t lose control and wipe out an entire lane of traffic. Simultaneously, they have to maneuver around seniors in a way that doesn’t impede a party bro about to swerve into their lane.

This convergence of seniors and the vehicular embodiment of YEET is my primary source of headache on Florida roads, but I have noticed a few other idiosyncrasies here:

• Turn signal usage is rare. I was once in a two-lane, left-turn queue with a police SUV and three other cars ahead of me. None of them had their blinkers on.
• It’s not uncommon for someone to leave three full car lengths ahead of them at a stoplight, for no apparent reason.
• The toll roads are out of control. They’re everywhere, and the signage is often confusing. A highway with a toll lane, for instance, might have a warning sign that covers all lanes a mile ahead of the toll entrance, implying that the entire highway is about to turn into a toll road, not just a single lane up ahead.

Each of these items on its own is alarming, but it’s the frequency with which they occur that really sets Florida apart. Before we left California, when I still commuted home from downtown Los Angeles every night, I would encounter street racers a few times a month. During the one week we stayed near Miami, I saw street racers multiple times a day. The words what the f*ck are you doing have also crossed my mind far more often than usual.

I’ll end this rant with some suggestions for Floridians at the wheel.

If you’re retired and wealthy enough to own a winter home in Florida, and you’re not comfortable with matching Florida’s speed limits, maybe consider spending some of that money on an Uber or a helicopter. On the flip side, if you have a need for speed, consider taking your talents to the established racing circuits at Daytona or Sebring.

As for everyone else? Let’s dream of the day when the only racing and wrecks we see in Miami happen around a fake marina at Hard Rock Stadium.

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​* Every Californian knows that the best way to neutralize a tailgater is to slow down, ideally next to a car slower than you, so the tailgater gets locked in at this slower speed and has to putter along behind you in frustration. It’s super healthy driving behavior.

** My driving résumé includes years of commuting to downtown Los Angeles, thousands of miles of towing across the country, and even “wrong-way” driving in Great Britain.