I came to the opposite conclusion after living in Atlanta for a few years.
My experience was that Atlanta drivers are very accustomed to high traffic, so will do things like drive closely packed af 85mph on the freeway, assertively take advantage of gaps or entry opportunities, and not wait around for you to turn and will swerve around you.
But they have the experience to do it fairly adeptly, and once you get used to it, there is very little friction outside of congestion. People use signals, anticipate movements and coordinate to ensure flow, and seem to generally get the “game theory” aspect of making traffic work better.
They also aren’t assholes like in the northeast - if you put your blinker on they’ll let you into the fast lane, instead of speeding up to block you. There’s very little honking or aggressive behavior. I’ve rarely witnessed road rage.
That’s called tailgating, and nobody can actually do it adeptly. It is far more dangerous than speeding is. You can’t account for a car in front of you suddenly needing to break if you are tailgating. It doesn’t matter how good of a driver you are. Physics is against you.
Assuming the person behind you in the next lane is not going to speed up when you don’t use your turn signals because you’re “very accustomed to high traffic” explains all the accidents I saw.
I came to the opposite conclusion after living in Atlanta for a few years.
My experience was that Atlanta drivers are very accustomed to high traffic, so will do things like drive closely packed af 85mph on the freeway, assertively take advantage of gaps or entry opportunities, and not wait around for you to turn and will swerve around you.
But they have the experience to do it fairly adeptly, and once you get used to it, there is very little friction outside of congestion. People use signals, anticipate movements and coordinate to ensure flow, and seem to generally get the “game theory” aspect of making traffic work better.
They also aren’t assholes like in the northeast - if you put your blinker on they’ll let you into the fast lane, instead of speeding up to block you. There’s very little honking or aggressive behavior. I’ve rarely witnessed road rage.
Of course some people suck, but it’s a minority.
That’s called tailgating, and nobody can actually do it adeptly. It is far more dangerous than speeding is. You can’t account for a car in front of you suddenly needing to break if you are tailgating. It doesn’t matter how good of a driver you are. Physics is against you.
Assuming the person behind you in the next lane is not going to speed up when you don’t use your turn signals because you’re “very accustomed to high traffic” explains all the accidents I saw.
It’s about 75/25 in my experience.