Lessons on how not to drive

This reminds me of just going out on street in front of my house even though it's half a world away!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XWLbPoBhQ

But specifically, this (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1653587/) probably doesn't help matters at all.

Without taking to stereotypes I have found in 30+ years of driving that:

Women are actually safer than men (stats back this)
Northern California drivers are actually worse than the villified Southern California drivers
Old people and teens are actually better than drivers in the middle (probably because they are on thin ice and tend to be watched most by cops)

but as per the stereotype,
girls text and drive more than boys

mobilehaathi said:

I haven't spent enough time in South California to give impressions about down there, but the number of people I see up here blowing through red lights (cars, busses, etc.) freaks me out pretty bad. The lack of awareness is staggering. Just a few days ago I saw an ambulance (lights and sirens) nearly get hit twice in an intersection near my apartment.

sigh.

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The worst is the Bay Bridge in or out of San Francisco and the approaches.

Highway 101 to 280 in San Jose can be scary, too.

Highway 17 from Santa Cruz to Los Gatos is just plain scary.

...and then we had blood alley

mobilehaathi said:

I've never driven to Santa Cruz via Los Gatos. I usually go to Half Moon Bay and then down 1, it is longer but quite pretty. The others, well yikes!

I'm not familiar with 'blood alley,' but I've only lived out here for a few years (and try to avoid driving as much as possible). What/where is it?

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There are dangerous roadways that get labeled blood alley due to higher than usual accident rates.

When Silicon Valley was mostly orchards there was no major 280 back then so a major roadway there went by all the fruit stands where people would pull in and out. This didn't fare well with the growing city and emerging high tech sector and more workers every month.

It led to an area of a lot of accidents. Pretty much highway 101 and 280, and other roadways, take up the slack so blood alley is now just Monterey Highway, or El Camino, aka state route 82 Real in San Jose area.

Much of the area south of San Jose, my area of the woods, is still very agricultural and rural and with small roads cut out for very little traffic. Nobody in their wildest dreams would have thought the San Jose region would turn into a populated, money making area. San Jose, the land to the north, and San Francisco have pretty much merged into a greater Bay Area with one area funding the other area's inventiveness (including Apple Inc.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_82

Mousse said:

I drive daily among the worst drivers in Texas, but California drivers scare the beejeebers outta me. I'm guess it's all those unlicensed drivers roaming the streets there.

I read that California ranked highest when it comes to hit and run accidents. Call me a believer. I almost got flatten by a driver while visiting San Francisco a few years back. I was standing at a corner waiting for the "walk" light when a driver hopped the curb. Only my lightning quick dodging reflexes honed by years of cowardice kept me from becoming a hood ornament. I tells ya, a braver man would have been D-E-A-D, dead.

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From what I have seen most of the drivers look to be American, or European American so I assume probably native born Californians in most circumstances.

I would like to think it's foreigners or illegal aliens but the bad drivers seem to be people like me, working Californians who live here who are just simply bad drivers. If there was a disproportionate amount of illegal aliens I would notice that but it has not been the case. They also don't seem to be broken down cars, hot rods, low riders, drag races and are fairly new cars driven by the average middle class citizen here in California. I would see typically common stuff like Mercedes C230, Ford F150, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, and other very common cars driven by people from 20s to 50s in age. Sometimes there's the occasional 12 year old looking teen behind the wheel being bad at driving but it's often the median age in a typical car most of us would probably drive.

The ABC news radio show mentioned that in Bay*Area, about a third of the bad drivers had college educations, most were middle class, and almost none of them were on drugs or had criminal records. It was the "middle-class" California citizen, otherwise clean record, who were disproportionately responsible for most of the accidents. There was no way to interpret the stats other than Northern California drivers suck.

As for the illegal alien theory, Southern California is far more infiltrated yet is a much safer place to drive.