It’s good to find evidence that you are wrong about something. As I was driving into work today, I had the experience of getting nastily cut off by a guy in a car with a Connecticut license plate. I know I was right … I was in the right lane on the I-490 just before the Goodman Street exit. The guy in the CT car was tailgaiting the fellow in the left lane to my left, and admittedly the left lane guy was going too slow to be in the left lane. So what does the guy from CT do? He gets behind me, he then goes onto the EXIT ramp for Goodman St, blasts his accelerator and just before hitting the barrier he zips in front of me then over in front of the guy in the left lane.
Aside from the obvious danger here and the fact the the guy broke the law in 1o0 different ways, I said to myself, “pfffft, typical Connecticut driver.” Indeed growing up in NYC I always viewed CT and NJ drivers to be among the most aggressive and, what I thought, dangerous drivers out there.
So, when I got into the office this morning I decided to see how dangerous these “bad drivers” were. I was totally wrong.
The states with the two of the four lowest fatality rates from car accidents are, incredibly, Connecticut and New Jersey (Massachusetts and Minnesota are in the top 4 too. Places like Montana, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and North Dakota are the most dangerous)! Now, we can come up with all kinds of explanations for it and perhaps rescue my view that I think CT and NJ drivers are off the hook. But, that’s a bit of a stretch. I was wrong.
CT drivers are absolutely insane. I wonder what these rankings would look like if we removed all of the fatal accidents involving alcohol.