Monday, June 22, 2009

Philadelphia Makes the Courteous Driver Top 10 - Really?

Out of the 25 top Metro Areas in the Country - Philadelphia Ties For 7th Most Courteous Metro Area. The fourth annual In the Driver’s Seat Road Rage Survey, commissioned by AutoVantage, a leading national auto club, found that Philadelphia (tied with St. Louis) is the seventh most courteous city in terms of road rage, compared to 24 other major U.S. cities. That’s a slight change from last year’s 11th most courteous ranking.

Contributing to its improvement in the ranking, drivers in Philly (tied with Cleveland and Portland) ranked No. 1 as least likely to observe other drivers cutting over with little or no warning/notice. And they ranked No. 2 as least likely to observe other drivers following too close to another driver.

Full Report

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to admit, when I'm driving in the Philadelphia area, I more or less expect tailgating and sudden lane changes without signal, and it's in the end nothing to me, so I suppose I am less likely to report that I observe these events than someone from another region. I do recall reading stories about 100+ car pileups in other areas (maybe the last one was on account of fog on the beltway of Louisville KY. Someone in the pileup was quoted "You don't expect stopped cars on the interstate", to which I did say "Oh Really?"... I guess someone from KY might not grok philadelphia driving... but on the other hand, we don't have many-car pileups, just slow traffic.

Andrew J. Besold said...

Yeah but as a cyclist I find the drivers much more courteous to me in Philly then those on the other side of the Delaware.

barryg said...

It's true about cars downtown being pretty civil to cyclists. I mean we all have observed some shit go down, but I was in Austin recently (a big bike town, of course) and was riding downtown with my friend. A car actively engaged in harassing my friend, stopping and starting and cutting him off, etc. He told me that getting brushed by cars is pretty common down there, too. I've heard stories from Ohio about cars intentionally tapping cyclists. I've never seen behavior this bad in Philly.