If you have too many people in one state, when they get out on the city streets and highways, are they like too many mice in a cage?<\/p>\n
I spend a lot of time driving across the country. Last summer, after a trip across part of the central and western U.S., I was tempted to write an article about my observations.<\/p>\n
I had concluded quite some time ago that Michigan drivers were worse than the drivers in Colorado, Nebraska, and Iowa. A few years ago I came to the conclusion that Ohio drivers are even worse than Michigan drivers. Maybe that’s because I made several trips to Columbus Ohio over a period of 6 months and on every trip I saw at least one accident on the city streets where a car was on its side or on it’s roof.\u00c2\u00a0 You have to work hard to get cars on their sides or upside down when driving on streets where the speed limit is 35 or even 25.<\/p>\n
My trip last summer reinforced my conclusions.<\/p>\n
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I was going to rank Iowa and Nebraska as pretty much a tie, Colorado drivers as nearly as good, Michigan drivers as worse, and Ohio drivers as much worse. I also decided I didn’t much enjoy driving across Illinois and Indiana. I didn’t have a ranking for these states but estimated they were about on par with Michigan.<\/p>\n
I toyed with the notion that drivers are worse in states with higher population densities, part of my “too many mice in a cage” theory. When one of my children was in high school, he was involved in a high school science experiment with mice. One of the unfortunate by-products of the experiment was the discovery that if there are too many mice in a cage, they will begin to cannibalize each other, no matter how much food or water you provide, or how often you clean the cage.<\/p>\n
The interstates are crowded in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and southern Michigan. (The farther north you get in Michigan, the better things get.)\u00c2\u00a0 In Iowa and Nebraska, there are a lot less cars on the interstate highways. And Colorado is pretty good as long as you stay away from Denver. (On the city streets of Denver, you take your life in your hands.)<\/p>\n
If you have too many people in a state and out on the highways, they become more and more like too many mice in a cage.<\/p>\n
But impressions from hours and hours on the highways and city streets of various states is still anecdotal.<\/p>\n
Now I have some justification. Results from the 2009 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test were released today. My observations have been confirmed. Nebraska drivers rank 5th, Iowa drives 8th, and Colorado drivers rank 15th.\u00c2\u00a0 In contrast, Michigan ranks 22nd and Ohio is much farther down the list at 34th.<\/p>\n
Idaho and Wisconsin are tied as the states with the best drivers, followed by Montana, Kansas and South Dakota. New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, and California have the worst drivers. If anyone wants to do a correlation between population density and how good the drivers are, you can test my “too many mice in the cage” theory of driving.<\/p>\n