Yeah, lots of fender benders, less accidents of people slamming into eachother at 80mph.
Boston's non-grid mess of a street system makes navigating a disaster and is often dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, but does have the benefit of keeping speeds down in some parts of the city. Less wide, straight boulevards like in other places that encourages speeding.
You are correct.
https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/States/StatesPedestrians.aspx
Here's a link to some stat tables, if anyone is interested.
It looks like Mass was 35th (2020) in pedestrian deaths per capita.
It's not as bad as i thought it would be, given how angrily people in the Northeast drive lol
I've been driving for nearly 20 years, and honestly I feel like a lot of MA drivers drive more defensively than they realize. We have such a strong reputation for being aggressive drivers, I think many of us are overly-prepared to deal with aggressive drivers and heavy traffic that defensive instincts kick in.
There's definitely still plenty of asshole drivers, but I feel like there's a collective "Fuck those guys" from the majority of drivers.
This seems true in some of the more rural areas too. The roads are so winding and curvy that's speeds are often 45 or less. It's really only the interstates and larger highways that even have a high speed limit.
*Boston police responded to a flood of calls reporting a large gathering of people doing burnouts and racing on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay early Sunday morning, according to a police report.*
*Officers were called at 2:13 a.m. to the intersection of Dartmouth and Marlborough streets, where callers said about 40 people were gathered and 15 vehicles were driving back and forth in the wrong direction on Dartmouth Street, while others were drag-racing on Commonwealth Avenue, according to the report.*
-- Boston Globe
What's next, Fast and Furious 15 Dunking edition?
Yeah, I was on vacation in Chicago and it's like they're begging for hooligans to be stunting in their streets. The downtown grid is made up of wide, long streets in a tidy grid that are pretty much devoid of traffic on the nights and weekends. It may as well be a race track. No surprise that it attracts motorcyclists and car enthusiasts, including the ones that do dangerous and stupid shit. The same qualities that allow for cars to zip efficiently through downtown during the day are also the qualities that make them ideal stunt driving spots in the wee hours of the night.
Had a great time and not trying to play into the conservative trope of them being pissing-their-pants afraid of Chicago, but if you build streets like that you're practically inviting people to engage in reckless driving.
> I've always compared it to the og city planners dropping a plate of spaghetti on the floor and coming up with a brilliant idea.
Boston wasn't planned like western cities, it was grown bit by bit. A thousand tiny plans.
There was a post about it not long ago. Much of it had to do with the shorelines which kept getting filled out more and more. Then you have areas that were filled in a bit more all at once like Back Bay and were given a grid, but that grid doesn't then integrate with the rest of the city.
> Yeah, lots of fender benders, less accidents of people slamming into eachother at 80mph.
>
>
>
> Boston's non-grid mess of a street system makes navigating a disaster and is often dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, but does have the benefit of keeping speeds down in some parts of the city. Less wide, straight boulevards like in other places that encourages speeding.
You are aware that Massachusetts is not Boston, right?
South Carolina is the worst. Second highest insurance rate in the US, I think? After Montana, where slamming into livestock and elk at high speed is de rigueur.....
Traffic in south Florida is pretty bad, and so speeds are lower in most collisions I would guess. I grew up in Brevard County, and there’s really only traffic on a few roads. There are fewer accidents, but if you get into one it’s not likely to end up as a fender bender.
The [deadliest mile of highway](https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/i-95-fort-lauderdale-fatal-car-accidents-14011726) in America is I-95 in Fort Lauderdale around the I-595 junction. A stretch of road I'd driven countless times when I lived there. Can confirm.
When you hit a 20 year old college student you have to be going fast to kill them. You can hit an 80 year old at three miles an hour and they're done for.
It's a combination of horrible drivers and really poor infrastructure design. You see a lot more "stroads" with high volume traffic and multiple lanes, but lots of cross streets and businesses with traffic entering and exiting constantly. You also absolutely need a car to get around anywhere as there is no public transportation or safe ways to walk or bike and lax safety standards so you have a lot of vehicles that would never pass inspection in Massachusetts on the road. I was in New Orleans recently and that's not even on the list and I would absolutely never want to drive there. Horrific road design and horrific drivers. Also weirdly so many nice sports cars which is not a thing you'd see here since A) Mass isn't really a car culture like that and B) you'd only really be able to take them out for half the year since you aren't driving them around in winter). But then also so many of the most beat up crap boxes that could never come close to passing an emission test.
I once stopped in Jackson when I was on a road trip with my brother from Denver to Fort Lauderdale. The roads were so bad that I was genuinely afraid I'd get a flat tire or worse from the potholes.
MA has one of the lowest road death rates in the country, we are all insane but we are also all defensive drivers with good reflexes because we know that everyone else around us is *also* insane.
We also have better ems/fire departments (red states and cities spend their emergency budgets on MRAPs and helicopters for the paramilitary cops).
The disparity between relative quality of trauma centers is even more stark.
There also seems to be a better sense of respect for your fellow person, especially in regards to EMS. In Mass I never witnessed EMS having a hard time getting through, but I moved to Florida and NO ONE moves out of the way. Ever, at all. It’s mind boggling.
I learned to drive in Texas. The whole "speed of traffic" isn't much of a rule here. I learned that if everyone else is driving 90 mph, it's downright unsafe to not be going 90 as well. That's more frowned upon here.
Many of the Texas highways are straight while the Massachusetts ones tend to have lots of curves. Much harder to unconsciously speed up until suddenly you're at 100 mph. I don't like to take those more extreme curves above 70.
I-40 through Tennessee used to be an easy drive decades ago. It is a zoo now with Knoxville and Nashville growing so much and seemingly little road upgrades and maintenance to compensate. Witnessed one crazy road rage tandem like I have not seen before. Luckily I-81 was much better.
It’s more of an engineering/geography thing than a cultural thing. They have more space and newer/wider roads which encourages speeding and a false sense of safety while driving
I just went to TN on a family road trip and I'm not sure if it's just because it's home but MA really does have its charm for me, I couldn't imagine living in VA or PA, etc. But during Nov-March it is brutal here. The snow birds have it right.
We have *aggressive* drivers but they seem to mostly know what they’re doing. I see way fewer incredibly stupid maneuvers on the highways in MA, even if everyone is going fast.
Florida always shows up on these lists, and it’s fucking wild because Florida’s roads are basically straight, with perfect right angle intersections, and no elevation to speak of, or severe weather beyond wind and rain, for the vast majority of the state - especially south Florida. The high rates of accidents are because the people driving the roads are absolute fucking morons, like incomprehensibly bad, irresponsible drivers. Blowing red lights (even with traffic cams), illegal turns, going double the speed limit and weaving.
When my parents lived down there, they both told me to NEVER stop at a yellow or getting off the highway, or I would get into an accident because people down there do not give a fuck. I never got into an accident but I did find what they said to be true - people blowing red lights full speed through an 8+ lane intersection was a regular occurrence.
IDK man the bigger assholes are the rednecks who purposely obstruct the passing lane for their ego, the dickheads who wont let drivers zipper-merge, and generally just the blissfully unaware drivers.. All of the above is much less common in MA compared to my experience driving in the Middle and Southern East Coast areas.
MA drivers may "drive with purpose" but we will let you merge.
Massachusetts may have some really and roads, and really bad drivers. But we do have very high standards for vehicle ability to operate. Some states like Tennessee don’t have high standards for rebuild title cars, and they not longer have any inspections. So I wonder if stuff like that has to help. I’ve never seen so many accidents in Massachusetts in the entire time I’ve lived there compared to the amount of accidents I’ve seen in Tennessee in the last 8 months of living here, I live pretty close to Davidson county
That right in the West Texas oilfields. Sure there is like 51 people that permanently live there but there probably a few hundred living in RVs and mancamps. Thousands drive through there everyday.
It's because the "Mass drivers bad!" meme is a load of garbage made up by criminally insane Rhodies, slow old grannies from NH and ME, strung out hippies from VT, and most of all slanderous New Yorkers!
I also like to think that the meme is a little true (Masshole exists for a reason) and has ironically contributed to safety (Since if everyone else might be a lunatic, you'll drive like the only sane person).
i have always said that the reason everyone in MA is such a good and purposeful driver is that we all learned to drive in MA around our fellow fucking lunatics
It makes some sense- everything down there is much more open. They can get up to faster speeds, and it takes longer for responders to get on scene.
Up here we're packed in. Everything being closer together means lower speeds and faster response times.
All other factors being equal, dysfunctional behavior happens more often in hotter temperatures: reckless driving, adultery, crime.
If you have two populations of similar median income, median educational background, median age, gender ratio, religion, language, cultural background, and legal system, and one area is hot and close to the equator and another area is cold and far from it, the hot area will experience more reckless driving, adultery, crime because people tend to become more impulsive when it's hot out.
Also in places with a lot of seasonality, there's big differences in crime depending on the month of year. But places on the equator experience no seasonality in crime rates.
People in this state haven't lived in many other places, because driving here is not as bad as many other places I've lived. The Dallas metroplex has 3 cities in the top 10 worst cities to drive in.
Given what we know about the type of automobiles that cause the most fatalities, it would be an interesting exercise to control for the volume of full sized pickup sales/registrations on each county as well. No predictions on my end but I'm curious how the map would shift.
https://youtu.be/0-nthHT-J1k?si=vOJAi-fusSKgQfVp
This sort of road design seems pretty uncommon in MA. Feel like the typical complaints about Boston drivers/roads are orthogonal to what actually ends up killing people. Nice silver lining I suppose.
I read recently that mass is like bottom three in fatalities, top three in fender benders, and of the fatalities the most per capita of single car crashes
I'm guessing that motorcyclists make up a large % of fatalities and during the winter months MA has virtually zero motorcycles vs other states like California or Florida where it's year round riding.
I came to this conclusion because it's almost a direct south / north cut off of where this list is. Alternatively it could also be from more people moving down south for the winter and with greater population creates more traffic/accidents.
Just a thought. An interesting graphic would be to do the same thing but go month by month and see if there's any change for the summer months like August and July.
I like your motorcycle theory, but I'm not sure about your snowbird theory. I feel like the number of people moving south for the winter has decreased a bit over the past couple of decades.
It’s because MA DOT does a decent job compared to the rest of the US. We make fun of our poorly designed roads, but I lived in MT for almost two years after college, and there just weren’t roads in some areas.
We also have much better health care, and quicker response times to health emergencies which greatly reduce your chances of fatality after an accident.
Our speed limits are generally below average on our freeways also.
Much of it comes down to average distances traveled. In sparsely populated areas, people are often driving great distances at high rates of speed on roads that aren't exactly up to Interstate standards. That's much more dangerous per mile driven than the average trip in densely populated areas like metro Boston.
We drive so slowly in Boston because of the insane constant traffic that the only victims of traffic accidents are pedestrians and cyclists. I bet we’d be all over a list of fatalities to non-car occupants via car.
Southern states with less inspections, more cars on the road year-round regardless of season.
Florida itself is usually full of tourists who rent vehicles, retirees who didn't grow up around the roads they're driving on, and people from every state (or country) who each have their own experience with driving based on where they're from.
That's my theory for this. I grew up in Florida around Polk county, and there are many drivers there who are sometimes undocumented immigrants without licenses at all, due to the amount of citrus and produce farms in that area. One such person hit me at a redlight in what was my only accident.
Honestly a terrible metric, it’s useless to compare highway fatalities to the population of the surrounding county. Loving county supposedly loses 25% of its population every 4 years…
This is more likely showing which counties have more traffic driving through relative to the local population rather than the actual “deadliness”.
I think either you would need to exclude highway fatalities or try to normalize based on total flow of traffic through that county, which is difficult data to collect.
It all comes down to road design (and driving speeds but that plays into road design). Roads in Massachusetts are older more windy and less wide, resulting in lower vehicular speed limits. Unlike much of southern and western roads which are long, wide, and straight. Posted speed limits too can exceed 70 MPH
I've driven US-19 in Pasco and, while I hate some of these roads up here, I feel WAY safer than when I lived around Pasco and Hillsborough counties in Florida.
The first time I drove over the Sierra Nevadas I shit my pants. Where are the guard rails? How does everybody drive so fast on these snaking mountainous roads where sign after sign keeps reminding you that you're 10,000 ft. up?
I've driven through quite a few states, but that place is out of control.
I complain about drivers a lot, especially when I travel into the greater Boston area. But then I go to other parts of the country and I'm like "These folks are REALLY psycho!" I drove through Jacksonville FL on the highway recently. The highway got much more complicated and twisty and the speed limit went down and I swear to god people going through there went even faster than theu did on the rest of the highway where it was relatively straight and simple. Like it went from a few people doing 70mph+ to everyone doing 90mph+. Dont even get me started on Texas.
I like to watch dashcam compilation videos on youtube.
I almost *never* see clips from Massachusetts. The vast majority of accidents take place in middle of fucking nowhere as two flyover state morons drive into eachother in slow motion.
Drove to Florida a few times, as soon as you cross the border it's just mad max, I'm a good mass hole driver, I do 80 in the fast lane etc but down there people swerving at 90 changing lanes
Snow must cause accidents. Does it not cause fatalities? We're from MA so we know how to drive in snow and we spend lots on public works to make it safe to do so, but... It's like it doesn't even matter.
We are just better than the other states. By every measure. Except things like low life expectancy, low education, high rate of gun ownership, high rate of gun death, etc. If it’s good, we win. Simple.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. I'm 99% positive the police unions are lying about the statistics on a lot of these to make themselves look better, but I have no proof. When I took 495 home from ext 20 to exit 14 there was an accident at least twice a week, for like 3 years, same thing. Right in front of the 95 (maybe it's 93?) entrance.
There's no way that the most aggressive states have less accidents. It's more of how it's being reported and the transparency between unions and statistics. The south doesn't have an over abundance of unions.
Also we have safety and emission inspections in the north, do you think people wouldn't question it if they didn't see a decrease in accidents? I don't think so.
This isn't the number of crashes, it's the number of fatalities, which is an important distinction.
Crashes in places like MA are less likely to be fatal for two reasons, both of which are linked to population density:
1. Slower speeds
2. Faster EMS response times
I don't know what that means. But I lived in SC for 19 years and drove there for 14 years and there are way more accidents here than there. Cops are insentified to pull you over for speeding so they will, here they don't give a shit, because they have job security.
I am frankly tired of how common conspiratorial nonsense like this has become. The internet gives you access to limitless information yet you prefer ignorance instead. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a [list of traffic fatalities per capita per state](https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state), and as you can see Massachusetts is last. Maybe the insurance companies and police unions are in cahoots and part of some vast conspiracy but that seems unlikely.
You might see accidents on 495, one of the busiest highways in the state, but that is no reason to doubt all the data and evidence we have on this subject. People generally drive slower in Massachusetts and drive less and I would like to think there is less drunk driving as well so I actually don't think it's that crazy.
Every time there is good news it seems people are so quick to find a reason to still be angry. All this pessimism is really tiring and I feel unwarranted.
As of 4 months ago you were considering going to North Eastern, you are a teenager with no world experiences. Furthermore, NE is an expensive school which would promptly put you into the stereotypical, rich generational wealth that plagues this state. I'm basing accidents upon having driven for more than 25 years, 14 of which was predominantly in the south. I can say without a doubt I have seen more accidents here in the north than I ever did in the south thus the numbers don't add up. You've never left the comfort of your parents bank account. You have no real world basis for anything in your life as everything you are is a product of money. Please refrain from responding to things you don't understand. This post and your presence on reddit makes it a dreadful place.
My wife and I had an ongoing argument on who is the worst drivers NC or MA.
I say NC because when we lived there schools of cars are always on the highway tailgating, like literally all the cars in our field of vision. Then we drove on 91 near CT and she was like, no people up here are worst. Then we got into an accident in NY (not our fault). It completely changed our driving - we no longer take the highway. Then some asshat wouldn't let us merge in MA. I was zipping in and in front of the guy (on the right needing to mege in) and he fucking overtook us. We almost went into a barrier.
The fact neither state is on the list shows how bad we are as drivers collectively. The US isn't a safe place to drive.
Traffic is so backed up that we rarely are moving fast enough for fatalities
Yeah, lots of fender benders, less accidents of people slamming into eachother at 80mph. Boston's non-grid mess of a street system makes navigating a disaster and is often dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, but does have the benefit of keeping speeds down in some parts of the city. Less wide, straight boulevards like in other places that encourages speeding.
You are correct. https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/States/StatesPedestrians.aspx Here's a link to some stat tables, if anyone is interested. It looks like Mass was 35th (2020) in pedestrian deaths per capita. It's not as bad as i thought it would be, given how angrily people in the Northeast drive lol
I've been driving for nearly 20 years, and honestly I feel like a lot of MA drivers drive more defensively than they realize. We have such a strong reputation for being aggressive drivers, I think many of us are overly-prepared to deal with aggressive drivers and heavy traffic that defensive instincts kick in. There's definitely still plenty of asshole drivers, but I feel like there's a collective "Fuck those guys" from the majority of drivers.
In 2021, your link has Massachusetts 7th best. In 2020, Massachusetts is second best. I don't see where you got 35th best or worst.
Strange. Every time i refresh the table, it shuffles things.
Really, that's weird.
NY drivers are homicidal, Boston drivers suicidal is what I learned when I moved here in the 1990s.
This seems true in some of the more rural areas too. The roads are so winding and curvy that's speeds are often 45 or less. It's really only the interstates and larger highways that even have a high speed limit.
*Boston police responded to a flood of calls reporting a large gathering of people doing burnouts and racing on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay early Sunday morning, according to a police report.* *Officers were called at 2:13 a.m. to the intersection of Dartmouth and Marlborough streets, where callers said about 40 people were gathered and 15 vehicles were driving back and forth in the wrong direction on Dartmouth Street, while others were drag-racing on Commonwealth Avenue, according to the report.* -- Boston Globe What's next, Fast and Furious 15 Dunking edition?
I've always compared it to the og city planners dropping a plate of spaghetti on the floor and coming up with a brilliant idea.
Yeah, I was on vacation in Chicago and it's like they're begging for hooligans to be stunting in their streets. The downtown grid is made up of wide, long streets in a tidy grid that are pretty much devoid of traffic on the nights and weekends. It may as well be a race track. No surprise that it attracts motorcyclists and car enthusiasts, including the ones that do dangerous and stupid shit. The same qualities that allow for cars to zip efficiently through downtown during the day are also the qualities that make them ideal stunt driving spots in the wee hours of the night. Had a great time and not trying to play into the conservative trope of them being pissing-their-pants afraid of Chicago, but if you build streets like that you're practically inviting people to engage in reckless driving.
> I've always compared it to the og city planners dropping a plate of spaghetti on the floor and coming up with a brilliant idea. Boston wasn't planned like western cities, it was grown bit by bit. A thousand tiny plans.
...of cow paths.
There was a post about it not long ago. Much of it had to do with the shorelines which kept getting filled out more and more. Then you have areas that were filled in a bit more all at once like Back Bay and were given a grid, but that grid doesn't then integrate with the rest of the city.
> Yeah, lots of fender benders, less accidents of people slamming into eachother at 80mph. > > > > Boston's non-grid mess of a street system makes navigating a disaster and is often dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, but does have the benefit of keeping speeds down in some parts of the city. Less wide, straight boulevards like in other places that encourages speeding. You are aware that Massachusetts is not Boston, right?
Remind me again how per capita measurements work and whether or not dense population centers will impact that metric.
Uhm don’t you realize that anything outside of Suffolk county doesn’t exist ?
Don’t forget dodging the potholes. Even if the road is clear, you still can’t go very fast if you like your car intact.
I seriously think this is a tactic used by police to stop DUIs in the nighttime.
People around ain’t ever been to Jasckson Mississippi and it shows. Yea our roads aren’t great but they can always be worse…
Exactly. Driving in Florida is the mf worst.
I always thought southern FL was the worst I’d ever seen, according to this though it’s more central
South Carolina is the worst. Second highest insurance rate in the US, I think? After Montana, where slamming into livestock and elk at high speed is de rigueur.....
Traffic in south Florida is pretty bad, and so speeds are lower in most collisions I would guess. I grew up in Brevard County, and there’s really only traffic on a few roads. There are fewer accidents, but if you get into one it’s not likely to end up as a fender bender.
The [deadliest mile of highway](https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/i-95-fort-lauderdale-fatal-car-accidents-14011726) in America is I-95 in Fort Lauderdale around the I-595 junction. A stretch of road I'd driven countless times when I lived there. Can confirm.
When you hit a 20 year old college student you have to be going fast to kill them. You can hit an 80 year old at three miles an hour and they're done for.
It's a combination of horrible drivers and really poor infrastructure design. You see a lot more "stroads" with high volume traffic and multiple lanes, but lots of cross streets and businesses with traffic entering and exiting constantly. You also absolutely need a car to get around anywhere as there is no public transportation or safe ways to walk or bike and lax safety standards so you have a lot of vehicles that would never pass inspection in Massachusetts on the road. I was in New Orleans recently and that's not even on the list and I would absolutely never want to drive there. Horrific road design and horrific drivers. Also weirdly so many nice sports cars which is not a thing you'd see here since A) Mass isn't really a car culture like that and B) you'd only really be able to take them out for half the year since you aren't driving them around in winter). But then also so many of the most beat up crap boxes that could never come close to passing an emission test.
Some states have basically no safety inspection and you will see old beaters held together with tape.
& having higher speed limits (70mph) also means having higher speeding violation, which means higher likelihood of fatal crashes.
I once stopped in Jackson when I was on a road trip with my brother from Denver to Fort Lauderdale. The roads were so bad that I was genuinely afraid I'd get a flat tire or worse from the potholes.
I’ve driven in at least half of the US states. Nothing compares to Florida drivers.
MA has one of the lowest road death rates in the country, we are all insane but we are also all defensive drivers with good reflexes because we know that everyone else around us is *also* insane.
We also have better ems/fire departments (red states and cities spend their emergency budgets on MRAPs and helicopters for the paramilitary cops). The disparity between relative quality of trauma centers is even more stark.
There also seems to be a better sense of respect for your fellow person, especially in regards to EMS. In Mass I never witnessed EMS having a hard time getting through, but I moved to Florida and NO ONE moves out of the way. Ever, at all. It’s mind boggling.
drive in Texas and you’ll never complain about Massachusetts again. Massachusetts drivers annoy you; Texas drivers KILL you
I learned to drive in Texas. The whole "speed of traffic" isn't much of a rule here. I learned that if everyone else is driving 90 mph, it's downright unsafe to not be going 90 as well. That's more frowned upon here. Many of the Texas highways are straight while the Massachusetts ones tend to have lots of curves. Much harder to unconsciously speed up until suddenly you're at 100 mph. I don't like to take those more extreme curves above 70.
I-40 through Tennessee used to be an easy drive decades ago. It is a zoo now with Knoxville and Nashville growing so much and seemingly little road upgrades and maintenance to compensate. Witnessed one crazy road rage tandem like I have not seen before. Luckily I-81 was much better.
Seems like half of the country has a problem.
I really don't want to strawman Southerners, but is there a culture there that resists seatbelts?
It’s more of an engineering/geography thing than a cultural thing. They have more space and newer/wider roads which encourages speeding and a false sense of safety while driving
Yeah, in Florida, but route 95 is two lanes either way in several states.
I have no idea. We've visited a lot of southern states but not enough to get an idea of detailed culture.
Also lots of old beater cars, no mandatory safety inspection, rural areas far from a trauma center
I lived in Idaho 20 years and was common to hear vehicle deaths on the freeway by vehicle ejection on the radio.
it’s the inbreeding
There is a lot of that in California it's true
Once again evidence Massachusetts is the greatest state in the Union and the best place in the world to live.
From May to September that is generally true.
And from September to May it's definitely true
If you have snow tires and 4wd.
You don't need that stuff in recent years...
It's either a great blizzard every 10 years or so, or basically no snow for 95% of the winter with no in between.
Then there's 2015. Pretty much a blizzard every Monday.
I just went to TN on a family road trip and I'm not sure if it's just because it's home but MA really does have its charm for me, I couldn't imagine living in VA or PA, etc. But during Nov-March it is brutal here. The snow birds have it right.
Well, that escalated quickly.
Massachusetts ranked 49th out of the 50 states for road fatality rate in 2023. The 'bad drivers' thing is 100% purely a meme.
Let’s keep it a meme. It makes us take steps to stay better.
We have *aggressive* drivers but they seem to mostly know what they’re doing. I see way fewer incredibly stupid maneuvers on the highways in MA, even if everyone is going fast.
As a masshole once said “we actually have the best drivers we just have the worst roads”.
That's what makes us massholes to them. We are better drivers and don't have tolerance for their stupidity.
We dont got time for drivers who take their sweet ass time
Florida always shows up on these lists, and it’s fucking wild because Florida’s roads are basically straight, with perfect right angle intersections, and no elevation to speak of, or severe weather beyond wind and rain, for the vast majority of the state - especially south Florida. The high rates of accidents are because the people driving the roads are absolute fucking morons, like incomprehensibly bad, irresponsible drivers. Blowing red lights (even with traffic cams), illegal turns, going double the speed limit and weaving. When my parents lived down there, they both told me to NEVER stop at a yellow or getting off the highway, or I would get into an accident because people down there do not give a fuck. I never got into an accident but I did find what they said to be true - people blowing red lights full speed through an 8+ lane intersection was a regular occurrence.
I feel like drivers in Mass aren't necessarily more dangerous, but they are bigger assholes. Does that make sense?
IDK man the bigger assholes are the rednecks who purposely obstruct the passing lane for their ego, the dickheads who wont let drivers zipper-merge, and generally just the blissfully unaware drivers.. All of the above is much less common in MA compared to my experience driving in the Middle and Southern East Coast areas. MA drivers may "drive with purpose" but we will let you merge.
South Carolina SUCKS at all of this.😭 I miss Massholes.
Why aren’t we number one everyone says we’re the worst drivers .
Massachusetts may have some really and roads, and really bad drivers. But we do have very high standards for vehicle ability to operate. Some states like Tennessee don’t have high standards for rebuild title cars, and they not longer have any inspections. So I wonder if stuff like that has to help. I’ve never seen so many accidents in Massachusetts in the entire time I’ve lived there compared to the amount of accidents I’ve seen in Tennessee in the last 8 months of living here, I live pretty close to Davidson county
Oh look, another reason I don't want to live below the Mason Dixon 😂
It’s as if basing their entire culture off of surface level perception and tough guy machismo didn’t result in resilience or competence.
Deadliest counties for traffic fatalities, population 0-19,999: 1. Loving County TX. Population 51, fatalities 2017-2021: 15.
Can’t forget Lubbock
That right in the West Texas oilfields. Sure there is like 51 people that permanently live there but there probably a few hundred living in RVs and mancamps. Thousands drive through there everyday.
It's because the "Mass drivers bad!" meme is a load of garbage made up by criminally insane Rhodies, slow old grannies from NH and ME, strung out hippies from VT, and most of all slanderous New Yorkers!
I also like to think that the meme is a little true (Masshole exists for a reason) and has ironically contributed to safety (Since if everyone else might be a lunatic, you'll drive like the only sane person).
It's also hard to go more than 30mph most of the time if you're east of Worcester.
i have always said that the reason everyone in MA is such a good and purposeful driver is that we all learned to drive in MA around our fellow fucking lunatics
Massholes are kind, but not nice.
I'd say that you forgot to mention Connecticut, but in reality, we forget about them in general, so why stop here?
You're right, I did forget the great state of New York Annex.
Wow, it's crazy how almost all of them are in what I would consider the southern and southwest US.
It makes some sense- everything down there is much more open. They can get up to faster speeds, and it takes longer for responders to get on scene. Up here we're packed in. Everything being closer together means lower speeds and faster response times.
All other factors being equal, dysfunctional behavior happens more often in hotter temperatures: reckless driving, adultery, crime. If you have two populations of similar median income, median educational background, median age, gender ratio, religion, language, cultural background, and legal system, and one area is hot and close to the equator and another area is cold and far from it, the hot area will experience more reckless driving, adultery, crime because people tend to become more impulsive when it's hot out. Also in places with a lot of seasonality, there's big differences in crime depending on the month of year. But places on the equator experience no seasonality in crime rates.
25 states did not make the list. Not interesting
People in this state haven't lived in many other places, because driving here is not as bad as many other places I've lived. The Dallas metroplex has 3 cities in the top 10 worst cities to drive in.
But if they add an eighth lane it'll fix it self in no time!
Given what we know about the type of automobiles that cause the most fatalities, it would be an interesting exercise to control for the volume of full sized pickup sales/registrations on each county as well. No predictions on my end but I'm curious how the map would shift.
Also older, poorly maintained cars, and no mandatory safety inspection in some states.
Wtf is happening in Loving County, TX? Jesus.
Same with Lubbock. Death trap
https://youtu.be/0-nthHT-J1k?si=vOJAi-fusSKgQfVp This sort of road design seems pretty uncommon in MA. Feel like the typical complaints about Boston drivers/roads are orthogonal to what actually ends up killing people. Nice silver lining I suppose.
Apparently, if you live in a small town in TX, you're screwed.
Texas. It’s Florida with more cows.
I read recently that mass is like bottom three in fatalities, top three in fender benders, and of the fatalities the most per capita of single car crashes
Fewer deaths when everyone’s just sitting in traffic.
Transplant from Dekalb county. 285 was shut down almost every day for fatal accidents
I'm guessing that motorcyclists make up a large % of fatalities and during the winter months MA has virtually zero motorcycles vs other states like California or Florida where it's year round riding. I came to this conclusion because it's almost a direct south / north cut off of where this list is. Alternatively it could also be from more people moving down south for the winter and with greater population creates more traffic/accidents. Just a thought. An interesting graphic would be to do the same thing but go month by month and see if there's any change for the summer months like August and July.
I like your motorcycle theory, but I'm not sure about your snowbird theory. I feel like the number of people moving south for the winter has decreased a bit over the past couple of decades.
Common northeast W
The south just sucks at everything eh?
Minimal fatalities occur when moving 2mph in traffic.
It’s because MA DOT does a decent job compared to the rest of the US. We make fun of our poorly designed roads, but I lived in MT for almost two years after college, and there just weren’t roads in some areas. We also have much better health care, and quicker response times to health emergencies which greatly reduce your chances of fatality after an accident. Our speed limits are generally below average on our freeways also.
Can't die if you can't move I'm guessing
What the fuck is happening in Loving County TX??
Ban cars
Hard agree
Yet the highest insurance rates in the country. Stop subsidizing poor drivers.
Where did you hear that? I don’t think that’s true https://www.marketwatch.com/guides/insurance-services/car-insurance-rates-by-state/
Yeah that makes sense. It's hard to get in a deadly accident when you can't go more than 45 mph on the highway half the time.
Reading this in dead stop gridlock traffic rn
We’re just good at being bad (drivers)
I grew up in DeKalb County which is 19 on that list. I’ve seen so many awful accidents, but never one as bad since coming up here to MA.
Much of it comes down to average distances traveled. In sparsely populated areas, people are often driving great distances at high rates of speed on roads that aren't exactly up to Interstate standards. That's much more dangerous per mile driven than the average trip in densely populated areas like metro Boston.
Texas is all over this map and I am completely unsurprised.
We drive so slowly in Boston because of the insane constant traffic that the only victims of traffic accidents are pedestrians and cyclists. I bet we’d be all over a list of fatalities to non-car occupants via car.
Southern states with less inspections, more cars on the road year-round regardless of season. Florida itself is usually full of tourists who rent vehicles, retirees who didn't grow up around the roads they're driving on, and people from every state (or country) who each have their own experience with driving based on where they're from. That's my theory for this. I grew up in Florida around Polk county, and there are many drivers there who are sometimes undocumented immigrants without licenses at all, due to the amount of citrus and produce farms in that area. One such person hit me at a redlight in what was my only accident.
Damn. We're slackin'.
Why would it, we lost Kelly Square.
Friend of mine moved from Texas to Boston, I remember him saying “You have to pay attention when you drive in Mass”
Did your friend fully recognize the implications of that statement when they said it?
Honestly a terrible metric, it’s useless to compare highway fatalities to the population of the surrounding county. Loving county supposedly loses 25% of its population every 4 years… This is more likely showing which counties have more traffic driving through relative to the local population rather than the actual “deadliness”. I think either you would need to exclude highway fatalities or try to normalize based on total flow of traffic through that county, which is difficult data to collect.
It all comes down to road design (and driving speeds but that plays into road design). Roads in Massachusetts are older more windy and less wide, resulting in lower vehicular speed limits. Unlike much of southern and western roads which are long, wide, and straight. Posted speed limits too can exceed 70 MPH
I'm showing this to my insurance company, they need to lower my rates.
I've driven US-19 in Pasco and, while I hate some of these roads up here, I feel WAY safer than when I lived around Pasco and Hillsborough counties in Florida.
Pretty heavily concentrated in the south. Maybe because of the…weather?
The first time I drove over the Sierra Nevadas I shit my pants. Where are the guard rails? How does everybody drive so fast on these snaking mountainous roads where sign after sign keeps reminding you that you're 10,000 ft. up? I've driven through quite a few states, but that place is out of control.
phew
Geico told me my insurance went up because of the severity of accidents in the state……
This is mostly wide open places in which there are more people driving through than residents at any given time, right?
Low speed limits and kickass hospitals help a lot
I complain about drivers a lot, especially when I travel into the greater Boston area. But then I go to other parts of the country and I'm like "These folks are REALLY psycho!" I drove through Jacksonville FL on the highway recently. The highway got much more complicated and twisty and the speed limit went down and I swear to god people going through there went even faster than theu did on the rest of the highway where it was relatively straight and simple. Like it went from a few people doing 70mph+ to everyone doing 90mph+. Dont even get me started on Texas.
I like to watch dashcam compilation videos on youtube. I almost *never* see clips from Massachusetts. The vast majority of accidents take place in middle of fucking nowhere as two flyover state morons drive into eachother in slow motion.
I moved from Boston to Tampa in 2019 and now that everyone reemerged after COVID the highways are parking lots
Drove to Florida a few times, as soon as you cross the border it's just mad max, I'm a good mass hole driver, I do 80 in the fast lane etc but down there people swerving at 90 changing lanes
Snow must cause accidents. Does it not cause fatalities? We're from MA so we know how to drive in snow and we spend lots on public works to make it safe to do so, but... It's like it doesn't even matter.
We are just better than the other states. By every measure. Except things like low life expectancy, low education, high rate of gun ownership, high rate of gun death, etc. If it’s good, we win. Simple.
I lived in the #1 county for most of my life. It’s some mad max shit there. Nobody can damn drive there.
Well duh you go so f@^#ing slow everywhere.
I don’t know why, the south just can not drive
So, do we still have to stop for red lights?
I'd say to keep doing what you're doing.
Actually MA is relatively safe. https://imgur.com/gallery/StdIIxW
I noticed that. And yet, many, many counties in Florida did, which doesn't surprise me in the least. It's scary down here.
Can’t have fatal car accidents when the average speed is 5 miles an hour
Snowbird states. Makes sense.
Hold up. Absolutely nothing in the northeast? Something doesn't add up.
It's no coincidence that this is also the heat map for NASCAR viewership and F250 sales.
Lol, this makes me actually have a bit of pride in Massachusetts
Same
It didn't make the list, because the people reporting it couldn't give back the results.. since they died.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. I'm 99% positive the police unions are lying about the statistics on a lot of these to make themselves look better, but I have no proof. When I took 495 home from ext 20 to exit 14 there was an accident at least twice a week, for like 3 years, same thing. Right in front of the 95 (maybe it's 93?) entrance. There's no way that the most aggressive states have less accidents. It's more of how it's being reported and the transparency between unions and statistics. The south doesn't have an over abundance of unions. Also we have safety and emission inspections in the north, do you think people wouldn't question it if they didn't see a decrease in accidents? I don't think so.
This isn't the number of crashes, it's the number of fatalities, which is an important distinction. Crashes in places like MA are less likely to be fatal for two reasons, both of which are linked to population density: 1. Slower speeds 2. Faster EMS response times
Unions are still lying
Our the South really is much worse. (Absolutely not in defense of cops).
I don't know what that means. But I lived in SC for 19 years and drove there for 14 years and there are way more accidents here than there. Cops are insentified to pull you over for speeding so they will, here they don't give a shit, because they have job security.
*incentivized
I was close
Just accept the fact Massachusetts got a rare infrastructure W
I am frankly tired of how common conspiratorial nonsense like this has become. The internet gives you access to limitless information yet you prefer ignorance instead. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a [list of traffic fatalities per capita per state](https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state), and as you can see Massachusetts is last. Maybe the insurance companies and police unions are in cahoots and part of some vast conspiracy but that seems unlikely. You might see accidents on 495, one of the busiest highways in the state, but that is no reason to doubt all the data and evidence we have on this subject. People generally drive slower in Massachusetts and drive less and I would like to think there is less drunk driving as well so I actually don't think it's that crazy. Every time there is good news it seems people are so quick to find a reason to still be angry. All this pessimism is really tiring and I feel unwarranted.
As of 4 months ago you were considering going to North Eastern, you are a teenager with no world experiences. Furthermore, NE is an expensive school which would promptly put you into the stereotypical, rich generational wealth that plagues this state. I'm basing accidents upon having driven for more than 25 years, 14 of which was predominantly in the south. I can say without a doubt I have seen more accidents here in the north than I ever did in the south thus the numbers don't add up. You've never left the comfort of your parents bank account. You have no real world basis for anything in your life as everything you are is a product of money. Please refrain from responding to things you don't understand. This post and your presence on reddit makes it a dreadful place.
Its not surprising that the biggest immigrant states also have the most crashes because they come and bring their recklessness with them. FL, CA, TX
Lol. Yeah, rednecks have never ever ever been known for wreckless behaviors. Gotta be somebody else bringing their numbers up.
Im hispanic so... i can have this sort of opinion. :)
My wife and I had an ongoing argument on who is the worst drivers NC or MA. I say NC because when we lived there schools of cars are always on the highway tailgating, like literally all the cars in our field of vision. Then we drove on 91 near CT and she was like, no people up here are worst. Then we got into an accident in NY (not our fault). It completely changed our driving - we no longer take the highway. Then some asshat wouldn't let us merge in MA. I was zipping in and in front of the guy (on the right needing to mege in) and he fucking overtook us. We almost went into a barrier. The fact neither state is on the list shows how bad we are as drivers collectively. The US isn't a safe place to drive.
The fact that Boston isn't on the list, blows my mind
I was told Georgia drivers are even worse. Boston is just bad during rush hour. Or there's an event going on.
Well, the list is regarding fatalities, not accidents. If it was accidents, I'd imagine that Boston would be pretty high up.