Impetus: Kars 4 Kids conducts survey to determine grades of courtesy of all 50 United States
I came across this article that declared Georgia amongst the rudest drivers in America, so I was curious to what the criteria actually entailed. Ultimately, the sample size was way, way, way too small at 2,500 correspondents considering the fact that the United States has a population of nearly 320 million, so I don’t think this is nearly that accurate of a survey.
Especially the ranking of Maryland, which somehow scrapes into the top-half of the spectrum as “friendlier” drivers, because the reality is that Maryland has some of the worst drivers on the planet who would rather let entire third-world nations die of genocide before letting you merge in front of them.
However, it’s still not entirely inaccurate either, and despite the strokes being very wide and broad, it’s still entertaining to see the obvious correspondence with stuff like population densities and demographics in relation to how certain places graded.
Like sure, Idaho and New Mexico and Montana seem to grade very favorably, but come on, do you, one of my six readers, actually know someone who lives in any one of those states? Not being from there, or had lived there, but actually lives in either of those states now, and is subject to confirm or deny the politeness of their motorists? I sure as shit don’t.
That being said, places like that grade well, because they’re about as likely to have variety as much as they’re likely to even have 50 survey correspondents in the first place, despite all that open land.
New York being the worst is about as surprising as finding out water is wet, but I will admit I’m surprised at South Carolina’s extremely poor standing, second from the worst. I’ve seen more of the state than I thought I ever would, but from Myrtle Beach, Columbia to upstate, I can’t say I’ve ever experience any malicious driving. I’m not sure whether the grade is affected by the notion that the state itself is mostly highways and giant byways or something, and people have a lot more road rage than I’m subject to seeing.
But the one thing that comes immediately to mind when I look at the grading heat map is that I’m really curious to know the correlation between these terrible grades, to the diversity and demographics of the individual states. I mean, stereotypes like Asian women can’t drive, black people are way too aggressive, the elderly drive 35 mph on every road, we’ve all heard them all, but looking at the map, and wondering about the notion that the Midwest and lots of those northwestern states are typically pretty white, compared to the vastly greater diversity traveling east, leads me to wonder what kind of demographic correlation driver behavior goes hand in hand with diversity.
Basically, what I’m getting at is that there seems to be noticeably lower grades in states that are known to have more diverse populations, if not leaning heavily towards minority groups. Georgia rates exactly where I’d expect it to rate, because there’s an extremely high tendency for people to be absently floating down the road, and when I glance over to see the asshole I have to honk at to get them to actually look up from their phones they’re almost always young, female, black or all of the above and I wish that I were a meter maid for a day just so I could legally throw the book at them.
But ultimately, as thought provoking as this survey was to me, its critical flaw is the sheer fact that the sample size is far, far too small. I bet with greater responses, the grades of all states would probably manage to get lower, and even places like Idaho and New Mexico would drop down, as well as Maryland dropping hard to challenge New York for the worst state for rudest drivers.
