Texas drivers rank 18th nationally

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May 30, 2008

Phil Riddle, Democrat Editor

Anonymous The Weatherford Democrat Fri May 30, 2008, 02:45 PM CDT

Texans pride themselves on leading the pack. However, in this particular race, there are 17 states in front of them.

In a recent survey by the auto insurance carrier, GMAC, Texas ranked 18th in the nation for its collective driving knowledge.

Apparently no one who drives on Interstate 35 was questioned. Had they been, Lone Star State drivers might have fared much worse.

Unless of course one of the questions was, “What is the maximum allowable speed at 5 p.m. on a rainy Friday before a long weekend while driving a 25-year-old SUV with four bald tires while texting and eating a cheeseburger?

Had that been one of the questions asked of Texans, we’d have been No. 1. (The answer is the posted speed limit, which, if you’ve ever driven on I-35, you know is laughable and darn near impossible.)

According to a release from the company, more than 5,500 drivers from all 50 states responded to the questionnaire, which consisted of 20 actual DMV driver test queries.

Texas drivers scored an average of 80. Pretty good considering a score of 70 is required to get a license.

The bad news is almost 14 percent of Texans surveyed would have failed the test. The worse news is those are the ones circling the courthouse every day, usually dragging an empty trailer, physically incapable of staying in a single lane.

Overall, the release states about 33 million Americans would not pass a written test if taken today.

It’s more than a little scary we are sharing the road with drivers who don’t know the formula for a safe following distance or the correct procedure for entering an intersection on a yellow light.

Almost three-quarters of respondents did not know one car length per 10 mph is a safe following distance between vehicles. And you’d think everyone knows green means go and yellow means go faster.

“Damn the red-light cameras, full speed ahead.”

The national score is 78, up a point from 2007, and the Northeast was the lowest ranked region in the U.S. New York, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and this year’s low scorer, New Jersey, have been in the bottom five for the last three years.

According to GMAC, nearly 20 percent of drivers in the Northeast would fail a test if administered today. Think of it, of all the cars you can picture on the Jersey Turnpike, spinning down Broadway, through the Beltway and into Beantown, one of every five operators is incompetent.

Three of the remaining four are cabs driven by someone who speaks English as a second language and thinks honking his horn, yelling in an incoherent tongue and making obscene gestures makes the cars around him move faster.

Finishing four points ahead of Texas, Kansas’ 84 was tops in the nation.

That’s because tractors are easy to maneuver and only go about 20 mph.

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The Air Force Academy recently graduated their first openly gay cadets. What does this signify?

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