Study Ranks New York as the Fifth Friendliest State for Drivers

A recent Forbes study ranked New York as the fifth friendliest state for drivers, surprising just about everybody who has ever driven here.

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Now I don't want to get into it with Forbes, but are we sure? Because I've spent well over 100 hours sitting on the Cross Bronx Expressway on my way out of New York. And I can tell you for a fact that I've never had a friendly experience on that road.

I've also driven through the parking lots on Vestal Parkway and once again, I can guarantee there is no friendliness to be found there. Everybody driving through the grocery store parking lot is secretly auditioning to be a stunt driver.

In fact, New York's entire brand is being filled with just about the meanest people you'll ever find who are somehow always in a rush to get somewhere.

And now Forbes is telling me that Utah, not New York, has the most confrontational drivers? I don't buy it. And Kansas ranked 21st? I didn't even know there were enough people in Kansas to have more than one car on the road at a time. How do they have a higher percentage of road rage incidents than New York?

The only states that New York ranks higher than are Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Dakota.

According to the study, more than half of everybody surveyed said that somebody at honked at them in frustration or tailgated their car. Another 45% said somebody made a rude or offensive gesture at them and another 43% said they were cut off on purpose.

My only explanation is that New Yorkers who responded to this survey simply didn't qualify those actions as instances of road rage. Where I'm from, we call that driving through rush hour traffic, not road rage.

I guess in Utah people take the car horn a little more personally than we do in New York.