Florida drivers

[low_delta]

Here's one for Roadskoller. Neil Peart, the drummer for Rush, travels a lot, mostly by motorcycle. He rides all over North America during and between tours. And he's written a few books. In Roadshow, he writes about driving in Florida.

In my experience, Florida was the worst state in the Union in which to drive a car, ride a motorcycle or ride a bicycle. Turn signals seemed to be a deleted option on all vehicles. On multi-lane highways there was no such thing as a passing lane, and the general mood on Florida roads ranged from oblivious to discourteous to downright hostile. Those attitudes often prevailed elsewhere in North America, of course, from coast to coast, but nowhere as universally as in Florida. Even in other states, so often Michael and I would witness that kind of heedless driving, and point down at the Florida licence plate on the back of the offending car. When traveling overland in the sunshine State, it was wise to assume in advance that no one ever looked before he or she changed lanes, made a turn, stopped, started, or pulled out of a driveway.

He calls Florida drivers the Anti-Destination League of Florida.

Comments

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you can blame it all on the old folks, though Neil did say that Phoenix is another bad place to drive.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't blame only the old people. Neil gave examples of non-elderly people who did stupid things, and he was talking in very general terms about everybody there.

[tudgedelta.livejournal.com]

Rush in particular have had a bad time in Florida! A few years ago, there was the incident with Alex Lifeson and his son getting roughed up by cops (http://www.rushisaband.com/display.php?id=460). Nothing to do with driving of course, except the Alex was supposed to go to a golf game the next day.

Anti-destination league - heh heh!

When I used to live in New England, Rhode Island drivers were often considered the worst drivers. I myself witnessed more than once RI cars driving between lanes and even stopping to chat with another car (with traffic building up on both sides!).

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Neil has a couple of pages about that event. That's my next post.

Alex had a home there in Naples. He sold it shortly after this.

[northernsnokat.livejournal.com]

When we drove back from Florida to WI a few years ago I thought the same thing. Florida was the worst and even the people who drive motorcycles were bad. I was wondering how they stay alive!

[raven-nest.livejournal.com]

They don't always. I worked in the funeral biz in South Georgia, and we buried a LOT of folks who were killed while riding bicycles in Fla.

[philrancid.livejournal.com]

As someone who lived there for eight years, I can definitely corroborate the statements above.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I figured you'd have something to say about that.

[raven-nest.livejournal.com]

Having driven there many times... and loads of other places across the US..I have to agree.

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

I laughed. Hard.
It's so true.
One of their favorite things to do, is zoom at a right angle across all 5 lanes of traffic to barely miss our truck and hit the off ramp.
We've smoked our brakes only in Florida.