I don't care what anyone says, rubbin' is racin'

I recently saw a conversational aside talking about driving in a city that I’ve visited a number of times and it got me thinking.

In another life I was an outside sales rep with a 13 state territory. In addition I would occasionally be sent to places outside my territory if there was a need. I used to work regularly in Boston, New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Richmond, Atlanta, Louisville, Lexington, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Morgantown WV, and Toronto. On an ad hoc basis I also was sent to Memphis, L.A., Honolulu, and Seattle. With the exception of Boston and the ad hoc cities where I rented cars when necessary, I drove to all the rest of those places.

In my opinion, most of the places that are notorious for being difficult to drive in, aren’t. Boston is congested, but it’s not rough. The same for New York. The only borough I didn’t drive in was Staten Island. I found that even in Manhattan people aren’t nearly as aggressive as we often hear.

I found Pittsburgh a challenge, but only because it’s very difficult to turn around if you make a wrong turn. But that’s more about terrain than anything else.

L.A. was no big deal and neither was Atlanta. Both could be congested as well, but with reasonable traffic I never found any real craziness.

In my opinion, the two worst places to drive were Ohio and Indiana. Indianapolis is a slow driving city. I think it has to do with so many people not being sure what time zone they’re in.

And somehow people in Ohio seem to have been bred with some sort of pathological aversion to speed. Couple this with Yield signs on the bottom of on ramps and you have a recipe for disaster. I just go nuts when I have to drive through there. But if you're reading this and you're an Ohio resident I’m begging you- speed it up a little, will you? It’ll be OK, I promise.

The best and fastest driving that I used to see was in Chicago. If the traffic was moving, it was moving at 75 to 80 MPH. 4 or 5 lanes of traffic with half a car length between cars and everyone flying… man it’s great. And it works.
The other place is Detroit. We generally drive pretty fast here, and it seems to work pretty well too. I’m of the opinion that if you aren’t willing to take a life to shave two minutes off your travel time then get off the road.

On a more serious note, I really do think that if you're so scared when you drive that you refuse to stay with the traffic then you really shouldn’t be driving. If you can’t stay with the traffic stay out of the left lane. Don’t slow down to change lanes. It’s a good rule of thumb that the brake will get you into more trouble than the gas will.

What about you? What have you seen when you drive? Where do you fit in? What places do you just not want to drive in?