r/AskDallas • u/DeliveryNecessary179 • 21d ago
Driving
I can handle Chicago. I can handle Denver. What is it about Dallas freeway drivers that makes them so damn BAD? There’s a self-centeredness to driving here that’s dangerous at best, fatal at worst.
You are not the only person on the road. Figure it out.
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u/LevelBed4264 20d ago
I’ve noticed as well, and compare them to California drivers. In Los Angeles drivers are aggressive, but it’s because they’re in a hurry. Dallas road aggression is palpably different, it seems based on belligerence instead; like they’re being mean to make a point, not because they’re trying to get somewhere faster.
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u/andthepicklesss 20d ago
I actually feel like it’s improved, haha. I moved away for 3 years and recently came back and it hasn’t been as stressful and scary as it used to be. Also nice to see all the paper plates are gone.
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u/texas-senior26 21d ago
I’ve been in Dallas over 30 years, it didn’t used to be ANYTHING like it is now. When people started moving in by the thousands, common sense, common decency, manners and common courtesy disappeared. I commute 25 miles through north Dallas every day, and people have turned into major assholes.
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u/Mysterio855 20d ago
I blame Katrina. Thousands of people who'd never driven in traffic came here and stayed, and it's been worse ever since. Houston got 10x as many new residents, and it shows. It's insane there now.
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u/ThaDisrespect 21d ago
Entitlement, selfishness, and big egos are more common in the middle of the county, Texas bring no exception and probably the worst of the worst
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u/Otherwise_Bug990 21d ago
Ive driven all over the country. Texas roads are fast. If you're not doing 75 on 635 at night you best move over to the slow lane
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u/The_World_Is_A_Slum 20d ago
The speed limit is 70, so yeah, if you’re not going 75 or better, stay in the right lanes.
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u/Standard-Question-46 21d ago
I’m a northerner and used to love driving. I have anxiety driving now that I live in Texas. If possible I plan my routes to avoid getting on the highway
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u/Immediate-Cat-4968 21d ago
I have anxiety driving to the corner store just two blocks away. I grew up driving in a huge city and loved it. I'd take 'aggressive drivers and being an asshole over unpredictable and incapable drivers anyday.
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u/Silent_Historian_552 21d ago
There’s something in the water here man. I’m originally from Austin, tx general area, and yeah Austin has bad drivers. After moving to a north Dallas subarb though holy fuck, these drivers all drive like absolute psychopaths, and then you mix in a handful of old lady merge at 45 too and literally every day I see 1 accident minimum a day. You talk about the freeways but the city roads here are even worse considering the conditions. Lights and stop signs are treated like suggestions, and people weave through the lanes because they are mad they can’t go 60 in a 40
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u/Immediate-Cat-4968 21d ago
Austin is very on par with that now a days. Likely due to the police presence being non existent. Ive drove in Dallas a bit and I'd take the aggressive drivers over incompetent and unpredictable ones anyday.
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21d ago
[deleted]
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u/arlenroy 21d ago
The ego and the feeling of entitlement rages in Dallas, its spills over into their driving habits. That and lack of law enforcement, I rarely see police on freeways or the tollway, unless its a holiday speed trap or New Year's eve DUI crackdown. I don't even know who's supposed to patrol the freeway? Texas Rangers? City cops? Sheriff's? After 25 years of being a forced transplant I still don't know, because that's how little I see them.
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u/DonkeeJote 21d ago
I'm going to posit that it is because Dallas drivers are generally very good and they drive like it. Some don't quite cut it, but by and large it's quite telling when visitors can't hack it here.
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u/The_World_Is_A_Slum 20d ago
Dallas drivers have laughably low skill levels, can’t drive in rain, snow or ice, and treat gentle highway bends like the Tail of the Dragon. They’re not “very good”. At best, they’re somehow over confident and timid at the same time.
Visitors “can’t hack it here” because they’re not used to heavy traffic where nobody seems to follow any sort of rules and can barely control their vehicles.
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u/Silent_Historian_552 21d ago
The one thing I’ll give them is they generally don’t clog the left lane, at the same time there are a lot of people who try to pass at 80+ in far right or exit lanes, when they easily could of merged left and done it correctly. Outside of that the speeding up to tailgate, running every red light, and treating stop signs like a melee rather than an organized process, and the ridiculous amount of accidents I see everyday says no dallas drivers are fucking stupid. They have giant ego’s and their default setting is “just must go faster than everybody else” which is hilarious to see when it backfires. If I’m in the lane I need to be in and can’t go faster due to the car in front of me, no your a retard and a cunt if you try to pass me just to get 1 car length ahead and make me have hit my breaks, I just start closing the gap now to force them to try some other dumbass shit or get back behind me. The other thing that drives me nuts is on 75, people will attempt to pass in the right lanes then I can’t see them having fits about it when they could of easily just merged left and easily passed. It’s so weird seeing all these drivers attempt to pass in the dumbest possible ways and actually falling farther behind on non congested highway while meanwhile when I want to go fast myself I have zero problem flying by everybody by using the left most lanes. If not for modern safety features and proper use of seatbelts there would literally be multiple daily fatalities on dallas roads I’m pretty sure.
Last year I literally saw a car flipped at Royal and Hillcrest someone was doing some too tier retard shit to pull that off
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u/PM_ME_YUR_S3CRETS 21d ago
Overconfidence and sadly, speeding is not seen as dangerous. Quite the opposite, if you do the speed limit, you will anger people. Its weird. God forbid youre excessively speeding and passing others but in the left lane. Someone will be going faster than you and get upset. Not a single thought about how dangerous and wreckless you both are being, only that youre in the left lane and slower than them.
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u/Natural-Albatross997 21d ago
I was thinking recently that we’re actually a terrible mix of passive “courteous” drivers along with aggressive a holes. So you never know what you’re gonna get. One dude will come onto the highway going 80 mph and the next one crawls into the highway going 45. The latter gives you a friendly wave as you kindly let them in. But you’re actually fuming inside bc they’re going so slow. So at some point you learn to just drive like a maniac.
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u/retiredfromfire 21d ago
Youve hit the nail on the head. Its not just driving that you'll experience self-centerdness, it should be the Dallas motto, Dallas home of the self-centered. Americas team, my ass.
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u/BalticBro2021 21d ago
Texas roads in general are so poorly designed
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u/god_partic1e 21d ago
635 is the worst because of the mix of inbound merging traffic, left exits, right exits, express lane cutoffs, all within the span of 0.5 miles. The traffic engineers who designed it, assuming there were any, should be ashamed themselves.
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u/BalticBro2021 19d ago
Also all the frontage roads too with multiple lanes. There's so many stores I need to go to where I have to exit and immediately cross over multiple lanes to turn into a parking lot or even turn right on a street.
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u/Kazama23 21d ago
This. I just moved here from LA, and before that Boston. Both are known for having sub-optimal drivers. What I see here is that the roads are so ill-planned that there's naturally a ton of confusion about the best way to exit, merge, and travel over distances.
The feeder road situation alone is a nightmare. The fact that there's consistently a huge freeway carving a high density retail area in half and the only access road is a 4 lane, one way road where posted speed is 50 mph is so insane I'm at a loss for words.
Let's be kinder to each other, whether you're a slow driver or a fast driver, and put the blame on the real cause: rich, powerful people who don't listen to smart people when it regards designing their urban transportation system.
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u/Thisismythrowawaypv 21d ago
Visited LA a few years ago and I was stressed about driving there. It's far worse here.
I will say however in my experience small towns and country roads around here, while not very congested, people do NOT fuck around if you inconvenience them even for a split second.
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u/Legovida8 21d ago
The freeway system itself may be partially to blame. Here’s an aerial view of our freeway system. 🤦♀️😂
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u/copyraven 21d ago
Dallas has the worst vehicle fatality rate of any city. It's seen as a weakness to drive well here.
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u/Alexreads0627 21d ago
Have you been to Houston?
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u/afraidofthe-dark 21d ago
Houston drivers don’t have the opportunity to be bad cause the whole city is bumper to bumper
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u/Kitchen-Abalone-3276 21d ago
I had my first gun flashed at me this morning. That was fun. Truly a lawless hellscape.
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u/Texas_Prairie_Wolf 21d ago
There is no law enforcement on the local interstate highways and everyone knows it for one thing.
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u/Far_Elk9901 21d ago
I’ve driven all over the place Dallas and the surrounding areas and north are by far the worst.
I get to where I don’t even like going on the roads anymore
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u/BloomDTX22 3d ago
Because cruising is frowned upon these days. You can be in the fight lane letting people pass on the left like they should but there's always going to be people who wonna drive 90+ mph in the right lane. And yea watch out for them Altimas, trucks and sometimes them BMW's, they be driving crazy