Transplants complaining about how they're better drivers than native PNWers gets pretty old after a very short while. Apparently winter weather driving accidents never happen anywhere else in the country.
I think my main issue with the PNW is the absolute cacophony of road markings and layouts (especially around cities).
There's just so much shit going on on the roads, compared to the east coast. They're little things here and there, but I found myself completely unable to drive on "autopilot." Nothing is intuitive; there's gotchas everywhere. Either there's an absolute bombardment of road markings and signs, or there's none at all (so you're either completely overloaded with information, or you don't have enough).
For example: you have bikelanes that merge into the center lane from the outside (without any strong indication, so I always assume the right-hand lane is disappearing -- but no, it's still there, so you always miss the turn). You have the absolute mess of highways that exit off into major stroads (!). Everything is so densely-populated that it's impossible to figure out where exactly you are, because there's so much going on.
It's like too much thought was put into road planning. There's too much shit going on.
Right. And as a transplant, the places you come from have snow infrastructure to handle it. Where it doesn’t typically snow, snow equipment doesn’t matter. So people used to winter driving as transplants still wouldn’t be used to unplowed, unsalted roads.
It is incredible how little self reflection people have as a whole. It is so easy to have smug self satisfaction in the misery of others for some reason.
Most people are tongue and cheek about this type of thing. When you spend every year dealing with snow, it is just a bit wacky to see how it affects people and areas who aren’t used to it. The topic has come up plenty of times in my life and it always immediately transitions into listing the obvious reasons why it happens.
But it’s an opportunity to get all territorial and worked up so we get threads like this.
Except that it isn’t very whacky at all. Infrastructure and climate differences aside- My assumption, as someone who grew up in the Great Lakes and now lives in the Puget sound area, is that people who do think it is whacky have little to no idea the difference in terrain between the upper Midwest/New England and here.
There's just so much shit going on on the roads, compared to the east coast. They're little things here and there, but I found myself completely unable to drive on "autopilot." Nothing is intuitive; there's gotchas everywhere. Either there's an absolute bombardment of road markings and signs, or there's none at all (so you're either completely overloaded with information, or you don't have enough).
For example: you have bikelanes that merge into the center lane from the outside (without any strong indication, so I always assume the right-hand lane is disappearing -- but no, it's still there, so you always miss the turn). You have the absolute mess of highways that exit off into major stroads (!). Everything is so densely-populated that it's impossible to figure out where exactly you are, because there's so much going on.
It's like too much thought was put into road planning. There's too much shit going on.