Originally Posted by sping

As a Brit living in the Boston, MA, here's my take on the issues:

1. Trivial driving tests, especially in the past. Most people just don't have an idea what the driving laws are. Just ask someone who has the right of way on an unmarked intersection... About 20% know, yet I encounter them on a regular basis. There are many other examples.

2. Ill-thought out rules and road layouts. A lot of driving laws are pointless exercises in following rules, and are therefore broken as a matter of course. There are endless stop signs where no stop is needed (there's about a 95:5 ratio of stop to yield signs, which should be inverted). Stop signs 15ft before the junction, so you are expected to stop twice. Traffic lights typically operate simply on a timer, so you are supposed to sit there on red watching an empty intersection (when was the last time you saw one of those in the UK? early '80s I think)... Everywhere there are road layouts and practices which are just ill thought out. I have a hard time believing there is a US equivalent to the old UK Roads Research Laboratory, coming up with best practices for road structure.

Bad laws, bad road layouts and ignorance lead to disrespect for the law. Nobody expects to fully obey the laws because the laws are stupid. Thugs claim the right of way when they don't have it, and come to expect it, and timid people give up their right of way when they do have it. It's all because nobody expects the law to really matter, and they aren't really sure what it is anyway.

I'm talking Boston here - I have also lived in Seattle, where there is just as much incompetence and ignorance, but people are much more polite and less aggressive. There it's a little infuriating, but much more tolerable. I'm sure the situation varies all over the US.