Survey: Idaho Outranks New York For Nation's Rudest Drivers
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Some say New York has some pretty bad drivers, and a new survey agreed.
But the Empire State was not number one this time. The state with the dubious distinction of having the rudest drivers in the country is the Gem State – also sometimes known as the Potato State.
The entire population of the state of Idaho is only about one twelfth that of New York state, a fifth that of New York City, and even smaller than the borough of Manhattan or Brooklyn alone. But an Insure.com survey said density and the resultant congestion and traffic are not always the deciding factor in creating rude drivers.
"The roadways of Idaho present a dichotomy of drivers: Those who are moving so slowly that they're judged to be rude, and the aggressive drivers who speed around them and flip them off," Insure.com said. "Together, with their opposite yet equally vexing styles of driving, they push Idaho to the top of the rankings."
The site said many Idaho drivers move 5 to 10 mph under the speed limit. But also in the mix are fast drivers who have no qualms about speeding through winding roads in mountainous, rural areas, the site said.
New York ranked third in the survey, and did not come off too nicely despite failing to make the number one spot. The survey quoted Steven Lowell, 41, of Staten Island about drivers' habits.
"I'm trying to figure out if that woman talking on her cell and smoking a cigarette is going to run a stop sign," the site quoted Lowell. "Good thing she did 75 miles an hour up to the stop sign and then flipped me off for not letting her go."
Lowell told the site that later in his drive, "I'm adjusting the mirror so Joey Bagadonuts doesn't blind me with his ultra-high beams from his tricked-out Escalade blasting music at 10,000 decibels."
The survey quoted respondents as saying New Yorkers are "known for their lack of respect for other drivers," and said the pedestrians are also rude. One woman told the site she was yelled at to get off the road by other drivers on the Long Island Expressway, even though her car had been demolished in a four-vehicle accident and she could not go anywhere.
New Jersey also made the top 10, coming in at number eight. One resident, Jason Fischbach, told the site that New Jersey residents "love to try and pull onto the road with far less space than they should, never like to let the other car merge in, and don't seem to realize that yellow means 'slow down.'"
Fischbach also told the site that New Jersey residents are guilty of using a maneuver called the "Jersey Slide," involving cutting across multiple lanes using the same blinker or even without signaling at all.
Outranking New Jersey and New York – and any state other than Idaho – was the District of Columbia in second place. A resident called Washington, D.C. drivers "self-serving, abrasive and unsafe" in a write-up on the survey.
The nation's politest drivers, according to the survey, are found in North Dakota.
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