Hackneyed Bitching About DC

Okay, since everyone seems to expect more and since only a few people seem to mind trite and hackneyed complaints about DC, let's go with the obvious, the old CL R&R special: People in DC are bad drivers.

We all know it's true, and I'll leave it up to everyone else to lay out the differences betweeen the drivers from the different jurisdictions. However, it warms the cockles of my heart when science proves that my often irrational and specious opinions are maybe not too far off the map.

Apparently, someone somewhere decided to test drivers from all around the country on their driving knowledge. I'm sure there were some methods and stuff, but I didn't feel like doing much research or thinking of any non-cliched things to complain about. Instead, I felt like wasting my time making a color coded map of the USA based on the results of the survey. Here it is. The highest possible score was 100. Less than 80 would mean failing, I think.



The map is obviously on a scale at which DC can't be seen. You'll be happy to know, however, that DC did not have the lowest score in the nation. It had the second lowest. Maryland was third lowest, and Northern Virginia didn't have it's own rating, but I bet it would have been fourth lowest. Basically, the whole area would be bright red and anyone that trys to tell you that such-and-such drivers are the worst is wrong. Everyone here is bad.

What a relief that it's not just me being a self-centered idiot thinking everyone is a bad driver here. Not that I'm not self-centered, just that when it comes to driving skill, I was right.

Just so you know, Rhode Island was the worst, and Massachusetts failed, too. That's why Rusty never complains about the drivers (does he?); he's never lived anywhere that people actually know how to drive.

Now, to change gears slightly, this wouldn't be why.i.hate.dc without some blatant "somewhere else is better than here" propaganda and since, for some reason, a lot of readers loved James F. and James F. loved Seattle, I will copy James F. The following chart shows that, based on the geographic center of the states, the farther one gets away from the Pacific Northwest, the less one know about driving correctly. The R-squared of the correlation is only about .41, but for a real world phenomenon that's not too bad. Also, the goodness-of-fit is affected quite a bit by the outliers. Guess what one of them is? Yep. DC.








Okay. Apparently lots of people, against all reason, read my other blog. In so doing, they found that my "post" from Sunday was a slightly modified rehash of one that I wrote earlier this year. Rusty had no problem with me doing this, but I should have had more consideration for his readers and let you know that it was not original to WIHDC. Sorry. It won't happen again.