West Coast Drivers

I’ve noticed that west coast drivers are significantly different from east coast drivers. I can summarize as follows:

West coast drivers are bad drivers. East coast drivers are assholes.

Upon first driving in California I noticed that cars were doing, frankly, dumb things. For instance, one car was at a light and wanted to move to the left turn lane. The car was behind to many cars to get to the lane, so it just drove up onto the sidewalk until it could get in the left turn lane.

The drivers here are also very afraid of pedestrians. They won’t even enter the intersection until all pedestrians have cleared the crosswalk and no others are nearby. Compare this to Boston, where cars edge forward until they see the first possible opening where they then floor it, weaving through the pedestrians.

In Seattle, especially, I’ve found, the drivers are very timid. While they’re not quite at the point of stopping at a green light to double check that the intersection is clear, it’s close.

Upon making it to the Pacific Northwest, drivers begun to use the center turn lanes not just to turn out of the road but also to turn and merge onto the road. I’d not seen this behavior before. Several times, I thought a car taking a left turn onto the road was going to hit me. But no, it stopped in the center turn lane and waited for an opening. Weird. This is probably safer and more expedient, but I’d never seen it before.

Overall, being a masshole means that driving on the west coast is extremely easy, though at times frustrating because everyone is too slow and cautious.

Of other note, California has tons of Tesla and Prius cars. They’re everywhere. But few have bumper stickers. Once passing into the Pacific Northwest, that trend dissipates.

I expect this post was very uninteresting for anyone to read. As my trip comes to a close, I’m trying to shed what little readership I have. Of course.