The United States has myriad wonders to behold, from California to Maine and Alaska to Florida, yet accessing those wonders usually requires driving — something that, in many states is bad. Last week, we asked you for the worst states to drive in, and today we’re going through your responses. Please, if you’re from one of these states, don’t doxx me. The readers picked.
Nebra... Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I vote Mississippi. They don’t have a lot of money down there, or if they do they don’t spend it on the roads. Plus, a couple of those roads have been washed out by the River itself and you can end up in a lot of trouble driving at night. But the disrepair is the main thing. Sometimes I’ve wished that they would just hurry up and finish crumbling into the gravel just to have a consistent road surface.
Worst of all, you might end up stopping in a small town. And once you taste the food there, you might not want to leave. The soul food down in Mississippi is so damn good. See, y’all thought I was gonna make a different joke entirely.
There’s a big difference between having money and spending that money where it needs to go. It falls to tax rates, spending priorities, and about a thousand other little intricacies of government. The food, though, is much simpler to explain: Southerners just kick our northern asses at cooking.
Maryland. It’s a lynchpin for the Northeast corridor and the stretch from DC to Delaware is interminable; it’s one of those places with people with many different driving styles getting in each other’s way, from aggressive New Yorkers and New Jerseyans to southerners going north while having little idea how to function in an urban/suburban environment.
But Marylanders themselves are the worst for one simple reason: No one uses turn signals. Ever. Not to actually turn, not to change lanes, not for anything. The result is abrupt and unexpected moves on the road. A friend from Maryland once told me that state law doesn’t require turn signals, which isn’t actually true, but it seems like everyone there believes it isn’t required or even customary so no one does it. It’s unconscionable.
Also everyone plasters the state flag on their cars and that thing is as ugly as sin. Yeah I said it.
Many types of drivers are tolerable enough when they’re consistent. Mash them all together, though, and things start to get very messy very fast. Take turn signals out of the equation, and you’re bound to have a bad time
A lot of people commenting haven’t driven in Florida and it shows
Florida’s lack of freeze-thaw cycles keeps the state’s roads in pretty good shape, but the hurricanes aren’t doing the infrastructure any favors. Or the average age of the drivers, as you get further south. It’s also unclear if I can legally drive in the state, which feels rude.
As far as on-the-road experience (not counting some nice routes/scenery), Michigan, especially SE Michigan, is horrible to drive in. The roads are in terrible disrepair, there’s always a shitload of (paradoxical) construction ongoing, and drivers in and around Detroit and Flint are aggressively mediocre. Left lane campers, cut offs, excessive speeders, people stopping at on-ramps, all of it. These roads beat the hell out of your car/truck and other drivers can be outright dangerous.
I lived in LA for years and commuted from LB to downtown and the drivers are astronomically better and more considerate.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the state that houses the Motor City would be so rough to drive in? Add subpar drivers to beaten-up roads and you’re unlikely to love it.
I’ll vote for Atlanta. (I know, it’s not all of Georgia, but that’s only because it takes time to annex everything...) The speed limit on the interstates in Metro Atlanta are all set at 55*, but if you’re not going 80, they’re going to run you over. I used to say that you had to try to get pulled over on the interstate in Atlanta, but then I think I said that once too close to a native. Now they’ve all taken that comment as a challenge and are one upping each other in trying to drive as poorly as possible.
Besides the locals speeding and weaving in and out of lanes (and bouncing off the other cars), there are the tourists; who, OMG, drive like the “Keep one car length between you and the next car for every 10mph you’re driving” is the Gospel truth and everyone cutting in and out are going straight to hell. Then there are the truckers, who either camp in the left lane at 50mph (ignoring the signs for trucks to keep right) or they’re 0.02" behind you trying to push you out of their way.
Or, if it’s between 6am and 8pm, traffic is randomly going 0 mph for a quarter mile, and 1 mph for the 10 miles before it, so everyone can rubberneck the accident going the opposite direction, which was probably caused by a local going 85, swerving in front of a tourist going 50, who slammed on their brakes and got hit by a dump truck going 80...
(* Or at least the limit used to be set at 55, I haven’t had time to verify due to the bad drivers.)
God, I haven’t heard the “one car length per 10 miles an hour” rule since driver’s ed. Distance between cars is entirely vibes based, and should remain so.
Come to Scotland, specifically Ayrshire. We’ve only one pothole, but it stretches from Cumnock all the way to Irvine and the Clyde itself; and I’m not say it is deep, but I swear I passed a kangaroo climbing out of it last week. Since Ayrshire contains Cumnock, Mauchline, Kilmarnock, and Ardrossan, you have missed nothing by not going there. Fifty shades of shite, as they say. Industrial malaise and broken mill towns where unemployment is so rampant that you can taste the despair in the air. Keep your windows rolled up. Stay out of Ayrshire, it is not a fun drive.
God, I love place names in Scotland. And people names in Scotland. And really anything said with a Scottish accent. Scots is such a good language.
The state you’re in.
I’ve been enjoying/cringing at dashcam videos on Youtube for a decade. There is no such thing as a state with perfect drivers. Drivers everywhere suck, and the only reason you see some states featured more often is because there are more people with dashcams. Wyoming rarely appears on those videos, not because Wyoming is full of good drivers, but because hardly anyone lives in that shithole.
My GF loves to point out that no matter where or how long I’ve been driving, I’m a magnet for finding the assholes that pull out without checking both ways, that change lanes without looking at their blind spots (and sometimes without even looking at their blind spot monitors that I can clearly see are indicating I exist), that are sexually attracted to their brake pedals for no god damn reason.
I live in Utah, so we have our fair share of potholes from the 100 degree summers and 0 degree winters, with a major gravel company just 20 miles from the heart of downtown leaving rocks to chip windshields and puncture AC condenser, and more than enough morons without their loads properly tied down so garbage is everywhere on the freeway.
But I spend plenty of time driving all over the western US, and drivers are drivers, most good, but plenty of shitheads ruining it for everyone.
Yeah, that’s right! Wherever you are, you shouldn’t be driving. Take a train, or a bus, or a bike, or— oh, there’s no infrastructure for any of that? Reliance on private automobiles makes our country worse, but is a system issue that none of us can individually solve? Well isn’t that neat. You learn something new every day.
Being a racial minority...parts of every state is pretty fucking scary. I can say that I really did not enjoy the bit of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Eastern part of Kentucky was pretty difficult, too, once gently refused a service at a diner. I didn’t that was a thing any more, but hey, it is!
Once you start seeing confederate flags flown from houses, you start wondering if maybe you should just keep driving. At least, I do.
Lifelong Ohioan who ended up in Maryland before/during/after covid and now in Massachusetts. Prior to covid I was floored by weaving, lack of turn signal usage, and speeding in Central Ohio. How naive I was.....
Maryland is fucking crazy. The dangerous maneuvers I’ve seen, the passing on the shoulder, the crazy speeding. It’s like everyone on the road is impatient and on uppers. It’s even worse post-covid. It legitimately gave me anxiety and I’m not an anxious person.
Massachusetts is weird, broken, and convoluted, and the on/off ramps are VERY short. The Boston-area “polite” driving customs are weird, unpredictable, and dangerous. I hate it. I refuse to drive around the city. Roads just turn into other shit and there is a weird lack of stop signs in places. it makes zero sense to me. You’d think with all the smart people in that area they would figure out how to add more roundabouts instead of these weird convoluted streets that turn into branching side streets that cause utter confusion.
I am moving back to Ohio next month for other reasons but I feel a massive sigh of relief just talking about this.
I do not like driving in these states. These two are tied for personal worst, for me.
Massachusetts is a bad place to drive for any number of reasons, but there is a saving grace to the commonwealth: Wherever your car gets stuck, because you didn’t get snow tires, you’ll always be able to walk to at least fifteen Dunkin locations to warm up while you call AAA.
I’m not particularly well travelled, but I have to nominate my home state of New Jersey. It’s not uniformly bad, but the closer you get to NYC and other urban centers, the worse it gets. Many roads are old and decrepit (though I am noticing some improvement), traffic jams and congestion are ubiquitous, and problem drivers include those guys with noisy muffler cars weaving in and out of traffic (usually occurring in pairs), 80-mph motorcyclists racing toward organ donation, and newly arrived immigrants who haven’t yet figured out US traffic laws. Traffic congestion is unpredictable (eg, Garden State Parkway); cars can be travelling at 60 mph and suddenly have to come to a dead job for no apparent reason. This leads to accidents, which cause further congestion.
When out of state, I found roads in and out of Chicago had appalling traffic, as did highways around San Francisco.
I lived in Brooklyn for many years, and drivers there...well don’t get me started.
The trick with proximity to New York is to just park your car and use transit. Will you have down-to-the-millisecond control over your route? No. But you won’t have to find — and pay for — parking when you arrive, and you might even have a nice interaction with a stranger once you’re out of your little metal and glass cocoon.
The state of being drunk.
I let Scotland in, so clearly we’re not dealing with a strict definition of the fifty United States. Screw it, sure, let’s throw in states of being as well. Don’t drink and drive, kids.
The hoosier state. Indiana.
Anyone who grows up in Indiana believes that they could be called up by Penske at any time to take the wheel of an Indy car.
The northern half of the state is a series of ghost towns, meth labs, gun stores and adult novelty shops, but mostly cornfields with nowhere to stop, the southern half of the state is also cornfields and nowhere to stop. (It is prettier though). Hoosiers do not like you.
The center of the state is Indianapolis and it’s a nice enough city but driving there is just nuts- the state motto should be “drive angry.”
And then, there’s winter. Indiana has what could best be described as a faith-based response to winter storms. Long stretches of I-65 will go unsalted, unplowed and otherwise unmolested by the hands of men, preferring to leave road safety in the hands of an indifferent god. The drivers as well seem to take on faith that they will be unharmed by the devil’s dandruff and thus drive as usual, ending up spinning into the ditches like the huge quantity of trucker bombs that proceeded them.
Why are so many people from indiana? Because you leave the moment you are able.
I like the idea that Penske may come calling at any moment, but no other team. I, personally, would want the call to come from Dennit Racing. Shake n’ bake, baby.
Pennsylvania. I’ve never seen such a disaster of a road system. You want to stay on the highway you’re already on? Prepare to bounce between the far left and far right lanes as you navigate a whole series of interchanges that would give M.C. Escher a headache. Road signs are placed as late as possible to minimise your chances of navigating traffic and making your turns/exits in time. There’s stretches of highway that have been active construction zones for the last 30 years, and they don’t look ANY different.
Second place goes to Massachusetts for the drivers. Massholes are the worst people to share the road with.
I do honestly love the bit of a road that’s a perpetual construction site. They’re working on it, sure, but the work is exactly countered by erosion and ice. A Sisyphean highway.
Since no one ever picks on New Hampshire, I’m going to nominate New Hampshire.
My father broke a rear shock on his VW Beetle on a particularly nasty piece of road in New Hampshire back in 1977. And when i visited NH in 1988-ish, I thought I was going to lose a filling going over the frost heaves.
New Hampshire: Beautiful scenery - terrible roads.
New Hampshire boldly asks the question: What if the best state in the union — Vermont — was instead bad?