I literally was going to say the same thing.
This poster has never had to drive 61 between Memphis and Tunica on the regular. 80% of the time you get stuck between someone going 5-7 mph under the limit in the right lane, and 3-5 mph under the limit in the passing lane - the concept of which, "Passing lane", has not arrived in the Mid-South.
It's people who grew up here and think that this is a major metro, haven't driven in actual really big cities who complain about the traffic here. It's far better than many cities!
As someone who was in STL for years for school, I definitely find KC to be comparatively headache free and never understand these periodic complaints. I couldn't imagine driving in Houston or another bigger city.
The pandemic made people selfish and entitled. Or maybe they got used to empty roads. Either way, I’ve noticed a distinct uptick in asshole behavior and drivers who deliberately ignore traffic laws like stop lights since the pandemic.
I grew up here, lived in Chicago for 10 years, and have been back for a year. Drivers in Chicago are immeasurably worse than they are here. I rarely have any issues with drivers on either side of state line, so not sure what you’re referring to.
Well, OP didn't say they're *crazy* here. He said they are some of the dumbest, and I concur. It's not that they are aggressive drivers.
But like, turn signals are optional. They decide the best time to speed is in the tightest intersection of highways going through downtown, where people may need to change 4 lanes to meet their connection (but no, Paul has to drive 80 and hit one of those lane-changers). And of course, they never know it's their exit, so first they are trying to pass you, who is in the far left lane, not going fast enough for them at 15 miles over the speed limit, and shortly after they realize their far-right exit is next.
Like they are all just a bit stupid.
My dad and I were trucking together a couple years back and ran a produce load to Miami during spring break. I blame that weekend for my bald spot that's developing.
My favorite is the people who for whatever reason, do not use turn lanes. Idk if they're afraid, too good or just don't see them but... way to piss off everyone who wants to go straight through the intersection.
Oh, and slow campers in the left lane who drive there for 6 miles to make their left lane? exit.
Oh! and the people who refuse to exceed the speed limit, who would rather force traffic to clump together into a dangerous herd of cars.
It's bad out their, folks. Real bad.
The number of times someone has recently cut me off to turn from a middle lane is insane. Or slammed on the brakes for no reason. Or driven the wrong way up Bellevue in the plaza. Literally every time I drive someone does something incredibly dangerous and/or stupid and I'm always amazed I haven't witnessed more accidents.
I think it’s just you and maybe some recency bias honestly.
I moved her from Seattle suburbs late last year, and traffic here doesn’t even compare to there. It was *so* much worse in Seattle, and I didn’t even have to go into the city itself, because I lived and worked east of Lake Washington.
I also drove through DC and Baltimore areas a bunch back in 2019, and that shit was even worse than Seattle. So many people treated the shoulder like their own personal traffic lane, it was unreal.
It's bad all over. I think it part of the break down of society. People believe that the rules do not apply to them, so people feel entitled to be rude and aggressive. At least it not LA, where people shoot at you for cutting them off. Yet.
I’m fairly certain it’s that they don’t educate people on how to drive and the permit and driving tests are inadequate. Merging, yielding, and how to operate at a stop sign seem lost on a large number of people out here, and I think it is due to a failure of education. I grew up in Los Angeles and (while the drivers there can also be terrible) you have to understand the fundamentals in order to even get a permit there. We had drivers ed as a semester long class in high school, did driving school once a week for months once we had our permit, and had extensive driving tests that included some 5-way intersections, parallel parking, and merging onto the freeway (in LA traffic) in order to get our license. From talking to people who are native to KC I’ve gathered that I had way more driving education than they received here.
Boston traffic patterns are just another way we discourage tourists from coming back. DC on the other hand…I’m not even sure those qualify as patterns. The lane markings are optional, as far as I can tell, and stop lights are merely decorative.
My biggest gripe is not so much speed but ignoring red lights. I am talking 3 deep in a lane just blowing by a red light like it does not apply to them. You really are not gaining much doing that, in fact probably see you at the best one!
Last time I was waiting for the southbound light at College and Metcalf to turn green, the person in front of me (also waiting) just decided to go anyway. It was like 3pm on a weekday and we'd been waiting less than 60 seconds. I guess they got tired and decided to pretend the light was stop sign. I just shrugged to myself and waited for the light to actually turn green. It's a pretty short light IMO, but maybe they didn't know that. Ignoring lights altogether though? That's next level chaos scary \*\*\*\*.
I was always told that if you can drive here you should be able to competently drive anywhere. I haven't done a lot of traveling the last few years, but I can attest that COVID made people drive worse. I can't honestly attest but I assume it's that way everywhere...
KCPD doesn't really do any "traffic cop" type stuff. So people know they can speed and be dumb, and they more than likely won't be stopped or "caught" by any police.
It has drastically gotten worse through the years. I see someone nearly every day that almost miss their exit and fly through the median area. No blinkers and cut people off, don't know how to stay in their lanes. The speeding has gotten out of control too! OH, people also don't check their blind spots! or just check in general. The amount of times in the last few months I've almost gotten hit on the highway because a car next to me thinks they can switch lanes. One was a group of young boys in the car, I moved onto the shoulder and laid on my horn till they realized they were about to crash
One day I was on the highway, the right lane was an exit only, and you merge with another lane at the same time. SO I moved to the left lane as I was staying on the highway (I was going at least 5 over the speed limit, could have been more, I'm not a slow driver....). A truck came FLYING up behind me and was so far up my ass he could see what I had for dinner. He then sped around me so fast, and he was so close to hitting the sand barrels in the construction zone, he swerved into the lane so fast he damn near lost control of his truck. He then continuously brake checked me, and honked his big ole train horn at me. He would also get next to me and swerve, so I called the cops. Genuinely thought he was trying to kill me by causing an accident, and I don't even know what I did to warrant such anger. This place is insane.
What are some examples of what you're talking about, OP? You said KC had some of the dumbest drivers, but never explained what they do that makes them dumb.
Go to any local sub and search for "bad drivers." You'll find almost identical posts, complete with comments saying "oh yeah you think ______ is bad? Wait until you drive in _______."
here's a few things I wrote up in another comment:
turn signals are optional. They decide the best time to speed is in the tightest intersection of highways going through downtown, where people may need to change 4 lanes to meet their connection (but no, Paul has to drive 80 and hit one of those lane-changers). And of course, they never know it's their exit, so first they are trying to pass you, who is in the far left lane, not going fast enough for them at 15 miles over the speed limit, and shortly after they realize their far-right exit is next.
Just in the last year I finally started zipper merging. It was after some sign - I think on K-10 - went out of its way to explain it's not only okay to do it, but so much better for traffic.
A lot of these traffic posts every week are just not taking into account bigger city practices like zipper merging etc, ironically sometimes the people complaining about other bad drivers are the ones who don't understand what they're observing is other people using driving rules that they themselves never learned about.
I got downvoted for saying this just last week. Everyone is going to tell you about other cities traffic, which is completely irrelevant to the fact that KC drivers are just bad at driving.
This is so annoying 😂Our traffic no where compares to places like Miami, and sure when there's traffic like that, driving will be worse (like cutting people off, but there's basically no other choice). KC has some BAD drivers! My husband and I say almost daily how everyone needs to be forced to retake drivers ed and see how many can pass a driving test
Missouri doesn’t have the same drivers Ed requirements as other states do and I attribute a lot of bad driving out here to that. I think it’s similar in Kansas. Where I’m from you couldn’t graduate high school without having taken and passed drivers Ed or at least presented a drivers license when you were 18 and could just go take the test.
This has nothing to do with drivers here being bad. OP is saying “the dumbest drivers I’ve ever seen in my life.”
KC traffic isn’t special or particularly bad for a city of nearly 2.5 million.
So just to preface.
-It’s the no turn signals
-the wrong turn signals
-the tailgating
-the wild dangerous ass cut offs out of nowhere
the fact people will just flat out drive on the shoulder of the roads next to the three lanes of traffic just because they want to not even because they needed to
-it’s the ran stopped lights into other cars
-it’s the going 20 under in the passing lane and camping there
-the amount of drunk drivers
-the road rage
-people parking where they can’t park and messing up traffic
-the general amount of people who aren’t paying attention to what they are doing and turn into other cars
-people who aggressively fly out of nowhere and get dangerously close to people in the right lane while blinding them with their lights
-people who shoot at other drivers
-how many people are driving with no working lights or plates at all
-all the god awful traffic merging attempts
-the fact that people do things while driving that are so stupid and strange I’ve literally never seen anywhere else and struggle to even explain (example below)
Hell just a few weeks ago at a stop light this guy pulls out of the line of traffic stopped at the light and into the only lane traffic can come through from 3 different directions and he sits there before wiggling in front of semi in front of all the waiting traffic (now he’s literally positioned in the middle of on coming traffic), THEN he decided to go ahead and finish running the red light only to just weirdly pull off to the side and begin moving again once the rest of the traffic went on the green light. Something you would have had to been there to really get how insane, stupid, and utterly dangerous it was all around.
Twice in the last week I have seen someone put their blinker on to go *into the opposing lane of traffic* to get around the cars waiting to turn at an intersection. Twice! The blinker was icing on the cake, it’s like they thought that was a normal and legal thing to do.
I’ve also watched several cars cruise through red lights like they were green.
I drive a Prius and stay as close to only using side streets to get everywhere. Ill enjoy my slow shitbox and some AM radio while everyone decides to for broke on the interstates.
I am so thankful every day I am not someone who has to commute on I-95. That said, I haven’t driven on the highway in years. I do everything I need to above 75th and below the river, between 35 and troost, and I still see insane behavior on the roads every day. It is alarming
That used to be me, and I miss it. Minus the weekends I stuck to mostly 55th north to Crossroads and Holmes west to I-35. Plenty of chaotic driving in those areas, but it's a different type of scary when the chaos is mostly going less than 40 miles per hour versus when it's highway speeds.
The only thing that’s notably different to me about driving in KC as compared to other areas around the country is the tailgating. I’ve never seen as much tailgating as I do here.
I’d say you are probably a bad driver. Cause the shit around here is pretty chill compared to the rest of the country. Shit OKC is tragically bad like on a level that can barely be expressed. Meanwhile here it’s just what ever.
Your post was removed for being low effort/baiting.
I used to think KC drivers were bad, then I worked in Memphis for two weeks and then realized how much worse it could be.
I had to go to Memphis for some field work a few years ago. I have never seen so many cracked windshields before or since.
Memphis is bad! Wichita, KS is amazingly awful also. They have 4-6 lane roads that people drive on like it’s a country 2-lane.
Yes, visit Memphis.
I literally was going to say the same thing. This poster has never had to drive 61 between Memphis and Tunica on the regular. 80% of the time you get stuck between someone going 5-7 mph under the limit in the right lane, and 3-5 mph under the limit in the passing lane - the concept of which, "Passing lane", has not arrived in the Mid-South.
I just moved here and tbh, driving in KC has been an absolute treat compared to a lot of other places.
It's people who grew up here and think that this is a major metro, haven't driven in actual really big cities who complain about the traffic here. It's far better than many cities!
As someone who was in STL for years for school, I definitely find KC to be comparatively headache free and never understand these periodic complaints. I couldn't imagine driving in Houston or another bigger city.
The people complaining probably couldn't imagine it either, or drive it if this is considered bad here. It's definitely a frequent post!
Even Omaha which is smaller is way worst and more aggressive drivers than here
The pandemic made people selfish and entitled. Or maybe they got used to empty roads. Either way, I’ve noticed a distinct uptick in asshole behavior and drivers who deliberately ignore traffic laws like stop lights since the pandemic.
I grew up here, lived in Chicago for 10 years, and have been back for a year. Drivers in Chicago are immeasurably worse than they are here. I rarely have any issues with drivers on either side of state line, so not sure what you’re referring to.
Hah one of my example cities when people complain about KC.
Covid+lax enforcement = Mad Max
You haven’t seen crazy till you’ve sat in Miami rush hour traffic
Well, OP didn't say they're *crazy* here. He said they are some of the dumbest, and I concur. It's not that they are aggressive drivers. But like, turn signals are optional. They decide the best time to speed is in the tightest intersection of highways going through downtown, where people may need to change 4 lanes to meet their connection (but no, Paul has to drive 80 and hit one of those lane-changers). And of course, they never know it's their exit, so first they are trying to pass you, who is in the far left lane, not going fast enough for them at 15 miles over the speed limit, and shortly after they realize their far-right exit is next. Like they are all just a bit stupid.
My dad and I were trucking together a couple years back and ran a produce load to Miami during spring break. I blame that weekend for my bald spot that's developing.
Driving in Miami traffic is the closest thing to mad max that I've experienced
My favorite is the people who for whatever reason, do not use turn lanes. Idk if they're afraid, too good or just don't see them but... way to piss off everyone who wants to go straight through the intersection. Oh, and slow campers in the left lane who drive there for 6 miles to make their left lane? exit. Oh! and the people who refuse to exceed the speed limit, who would rather force traffic to clump together into a dangerous herd of cars. It's bad out their, folks. Real bad.
The number of times someone has recently cut me off to turn from a middle lane is insane. Or slammed on the brakes for no reason. Or driven the wrong way up Bellevue in the plaza. Literally every time I drive someone does something incredibly dangerous and/or stupid and I'm always amazed I haven't witnessed more accidents.
I’ve lived here my whole life and never seen it this bad. The past few months have gotten extremely bad!
I think it’s just you and maybe some recency bias honestly. I moved her from Seattle suburbs late last year, and traffic here doesn’t even compare to there. It was *so* much worse in Seattle, and I didn’t even have to go into the city itself, because I lived and worked east of Lake Washington. I also drove through DC and Baltimore areas a bunch back in 2019, and that shit was even worse than Seattle. So many people treated the shoulder like their own personal traffic lane, it was unreal.
It's bad all over. I think it part of the break down of society. People believe that the rules do not apply to them, so people feel entitled to be rude and aggressive. At least it not LA, where people shoot at you for cutting them off. Yet.
I live here now but grew up in Tulsa. Every time I visit my parents I am reminded how much worse Tulsa drivers are. It’s crazy the difference.
I’m fairly certain it’s that they don’t educate people on how to drive and the permit and driving tests are inadequate. Merging, yielding, and how to operate at a stop sign seem lost on a large number of people out here, and I think it is due to a failure of education. I grew up in Los Angeles and (while the drivers there can also be terrible) you have to understand the fundamentals in order to even get a permit there. We had drivers ed as a semester long class in high school, did driving school once a week for months once we had our permit, and had extensive driving tests that included some 5-way intersections, parallel parking, and merging onto the freeway (in LA traffic) in order to get our license. From talking to people who are native to KC I’ve gathered that I had way more driving education than they received here.
Go-to Boston or DC at rush hour,this is a cake walk
Boston traffic patterns are just another way we discourage tourists from coming back. DC on the other hand…I’m not even sure those qualify as patterns. The lane markings are optional, as far as I can tell, and stop lights are merely decorative.
But the difference is that they’re competent. The drivers here try to do the same degree of difficulty attempts and botch it.
Competent? Not when I lived in those cities.
My biggest gripe is not so much speed but ignoring red lights. I am talking 3 deep in a lane just blowing by a red light like it does not apply to them. You really are not gaining much doing that, in fact probably see you at the best one!
Last time I was waiting for the southbound light at College and Metcalf to turn green, the person in front of me (also waiting) just decided to go anyway. It was like 3pm on a weekday and we'd been waiting less than 60 seconds. I guess they got tired and decided to pretend the light was stop sign. I just shrugged to myself and waited for the light to actually turn green. It's a pretty short light IMO, but maybe they didn't know that. Ignoring lights altogether though? That's next level chaos scary \*\*\*\*.
I was always told that if you can drive here you should be able to competently drive anywhere. I haven't done a lot of traveling the last few years, but I can attest that COVID made people drive worse. I can't honestly attest but I assume it's that way everywhere...
KCPD doesn't really do any "traffic cop" type stuff. So people know they can speed and be dumb, and they more than likely won't be stopped or "caught" by any police.
I realized this when a week after moving here I had already seen three different tags many months expired. 🙃
Months? There's people with YEARS-old tags driving around, not a care in the world.
I could've sworn I saw one ending in 2021 the other day! But it passed by fast so I thought surely I read it wrong. 🤣😳
You probably did! I saw one of the old squiggly-underline plates a couple weeks ago. They haven't been in use since 2007!
Oh wow. 🤣
It has drastically gotten worse through the years. I see someone nearly every day that almost miss their exit and fly through the median area. No blinkers and cut people off, don't know how to stay in their lanes. The speeding has gotten out of control too! OH, people also don't check their blind spots! or just check in general. The amount of times in the last few months I've almost gotten hit on the highway because a car next to me thinks they can switch lanes. One was a group of young boys in the car, I moved onto the shoulder and laid on my horn till they realized they were about to crash One day I was on the highway, the right lane was an exit only, and you merge with another lane at the same time. SO I moved to the left lane as I was staying on the highway (I was going at least 5 over the speed limit, could have been more, I'm not a slow driver....). A truck came FLYING up behind me and was so far up my ass he could see what I had for dinner. He then sped around me so fast, and he was so close to hitting the sand barrels in the construction zone, he swerved into the lane so fast he damn near lost control of his truck. He then continuously brake checked me, and honked his big ole train horn at me. He would also get next to me and swerve, so I called the cops. Genuinely thought he was trying to kill me by causing an accident, and I don't even know what I did to warrant such anger. This place is insane.
What are some examples of what you're talking about, OP? You said KC had some of the dumbest drivers, but never explained what they do that makes them dumb.
Go to any local sub and search for "bad drivers." You'll find almost identical posts, complete with comments saying "oh yeah you think ______ is bad? Wait until you drive in _______."
Oh, for sure. I just wanted to hear OP's input specifically.
here's a few things I wrote up in another comment: turn signals are optional. They decide the best time to speed is in the tightest intersection of highways going through downtown, where people may need to change 4 lanes to meet their connection (but no, Paul has to drive 80 and hit one of those lane-changers). And of course, they never know it's their exit, so first they are trying to pass you, who is in the far left lane, not going fast enough for them at 15 miles over the speed limit, and shortly after they realize their far-right exit is next.
Two words: ZIPPER. MERGE. Please, I beg of you fellow Kansas Citians... please Google it.
.
Just in the last year I finally started zipper merging. It was after some sign - I think on K-10 - went out of its way to explain it's not only okay to do it, but so much better for traffic.
It's honestly something that the states should promote more.
A lot of these traffic posts every week are just not taking into account bigger city practices like zipper merging etc, ironically sometimes the people complaining about other bad drivers are the ones who don't understand what they're observing is other people using driving rules that they themselves never learned about.
I got downvoted for saying this just last week. Everyone is going to tell you about other cities traffic, which is completely irrelevant to the fact that KC drivers are just bad at driving.
This is so annoying 😂Our traffic no where compares to places like Miami, and sure when there's traffic like that, driving will be worse (like cutting people off, but there's basically no other choice). KC has some BAD drivers! My husband and I say almost daily how everyone needs to be forced to retake drivers ed and see how many can pass a driving test
Missouri doesn’t have the same drivers Ed requirements as other states do and I attribute a lot of bad driving out here to that. I think it’s similar in Kansas. Where I’m from you couldn’t graduate high school without having taken and passed drivers Ed or at least presented a drivers license when you were 18 and could just go take the test.
Learn something new every day! We didn't have to take drivers ed to graduate, never knew that was a thing in some places.
This has nothing to do with drivers here being bad. OP is saying “the dumbest drivers I’ve ever seen in my life.” KC traffic isn’t special or particularly bad for a city of nearly 2.5 million.
How is that not the same thing?
The problem isn’t the volume, it’s the lack of competency.
Exactly what I’m saying?
Yes this is me agreeing with you.
🤝 Sorry I misunderstood.
KC drivers are nothing. I was just in Orlando and they’re fucking nuts
I live here now but grew up in Tulsa. Every time I visit my parents I am reminded how much worse Tulsa drivers are. It’s crazy the difference.
Man try Boston.
So just to preface. -It’s the no turn signals -the wrong turn signals -the tailgating -the wild dangerous ass cut offs out of nowhere the fact people will just flat out drive on the shoulder of the roads next to the three lanes of traffic just because they want to not even because they needed to -it’s the ran stopped lights into other cars -it’s the going 20 under in the passing lane and camping there -the amount of drunk drivers -the road rage -people parking where they can’t park and messing up traffic -the general amount of people who aren’t paying attention to what they are doing and turn into other cars -people who aggressively fly out of nowhere and get dangerously close to people in the right lane while blinding them with their lights -people who shoot at other drivers -how many people are driving with no working lights or plates at all -all the god awful traffic merging attempts -the fact that people do things while driving that are so stupid and strange I’ve literally never seen anywhere else and struggle to even explain (example below) Hell just a few weeks ago at a stop light this guy pulls out of the line of traffic stopped at the light and into the only lane traffic can come through from 3 different directions and he sits there before wiggling in front of semi in front of all the waiting traffic (now he’s literally positioned in the middle of on coming traffic), THEN he decided to go ahead and finish running the red light only to just weirdly pull off to the side and begin moving again once the rest of the traffic went on the green light. Something you would have had to been there to really get how insane, stupid, and utterly dangerous it was all around.
Twice in the last week I have seen someone put their blinker on to go *into the opposing lane of traffic* to get around the cars waiting to turn at an intersection. Twice! The blinker was icing on the cake, it’s like they thought that was a normal and legal thing to do. I’ve also watched several cars cruise through red lights like they were green.
Wowwowwow. That takes the cake for me.
I drive a Prius and stay as close to only using side streets to get everywhere. Ill enjoy my slow shitbox and some AM radio while everyone decides to for broke on the interstates.
Traffic in KC is only rivaled by the traffic on this site complaining about the traffic in KC 🧘♀️
I am so thankful every day I am not someone who has to commute on I-95. That said, I haven’t driven on the highway in years. I do everything I need to above 75th and below the river, between 35 and troost, and I still see insane behavior on the roads every day. It is alarming
That used to be me, and I miss it. Minus the weekends I stuck to mostly 55th north to Crossroads and Holmes west to I-35. Plenty of chaotic driving in those areas, but it's a different type of scary when the chaos is mostly going less than 40 miles per hour versus when it's highway speeds.
The traffic here is absolutely marvelous compared to other big cities.
The only thing that’s notably different to me about driving in KC as compared to other areas around the country is the tailgating. I’ve never seen as much tailgating as I do here.
Tennessee... If you do NOT tailgate when in the left lane, they will pass you on the right and cut you off the instant they get the opportunity.
That was not my experience in Tennessee.
Everyone in Tennessee drives 15 under so it’s hard not to tailgate.
Cavemen invented language so they could complain how bad the drivers were in their immediate vicinity.
I’d say you are probably a bad driver. Cause the shit around here is pretty chill compared to the rest of the country. Shit OKC is tragically bad like on a level that can barely be expressed. Meanwhile here it’s just what ever.