Rhode Island drivers worse than all other states?
GMAC Insurance tested already licensed drivers from each state and the District of Columbia to see if they could pass a nationally standardized test intended to be comparable to a state written test for driver licensing and found that Rhode Island drivers had the highest failure rate of 24.9%, closely followed by D.C. with a failure rate of 23.5% and, in a tie for third worst, Massachusetts and New Jersey with a failure rate of 21.4%. The national average was a failure rate of only 16.3%. "In fact, if retested today, nearly 18 million would fail the test required to get a license," according to GMAC's executive summary.
Personally, I don't think Rhode Island drivers are notably bad. In my experience, Massachusetts drivers tend to be a lot more aggressive, but only in the Boston metropolitan area and not in the large rural spaces out toward the western part of the state. New York City drivers are, on average, more courteous than Boston drivers, but the few really bad New York City drivers are much worse than what is likely to be encountered in Boston. For example, Boston cab drivers will race cars and cut off pedestrians, but only in Manhattan have I actually seen cab drivers hop out of their cabs and start brawling, rolling around across the lanes of travel on Park Avenue in Midtown. Since Rhode Island is almost exclusively urban, there is nothing comparable to western Massachusetts to offset the statistical skew of city driving. Admittedly, Providence itself is pretty bad, where seeing police cars blowing through red lights and stop signs without lights or siren is a daily occurrence.
However, the GMAC survey made no attempt to test actual driving ability or attitude, but simply competence to pass the written portion of the licensing test. The unusually complex traffic laws in Rhode Island, most of which are unfamiliar even to police officers charged with enforcing them, are a serious obstacle to driver education. For example, the CNN news story about the GMAC survey states, "Approximately one in three drivers said they usually do not stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. At least one out of five drivers did not know that pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right of way." However, as hard as it may be to believe, pedestrians do not necessarily have the right of way in Rhode Island just because they happen to be in a crosswalk! The rule in Rhode Island only gives pedestrians the right of way in a crosswalk if they are on the same half of the road as the driver, and then only in the absence of traffic control signals. (You can verify this in Section 31-18-3 of the Rhode Island General Laws.)
Other lacking knowledge exposed by the test is more obviously practical. For example, "At least 1 in 5 drivers do not know.... That highways are the most slippery just when it starts to rain after a dry spell. In fact, this is the question most often answered incorrectly for the second year in a row." That particular item of information is drummed into motorcylcists, for whom it is a life-or-death issue, but it is of basic importance to drivers of ordinary automobiles as well.
In the end, the blame for the terrible performance of Rhode Island drivers on the GMAC survey, scoring dead last two years in a row, cannot be entirely attributed to the drivers themselves nor to the complicated traffic laws, but is due in large part to the consistently awful driver training programs operated by the state to which high school students are typically subjected.
Personally, I don't think Rhode Island drivers are notably bad. In my experience, Massachusetts drivers tend to be a lot more aggressive, but only in the Boston metropolitan area and not in the large rural spaces out toward the western part of the state. New York City drivers are, on average, more courteous than Boston drivers, but the few really bad New York City drivers are much worse than what is likely to be encountered in Boston. For example, Boston cab drivers will race cars and cut off pedestrians, but only in Manhattan have I actually seen cab drivers hop out of their cabs and start brawling, rolling around across the lanes of travel on Park Avenue in Midtown. Since Rhode Island is almost exclusively urban, there is nothing comparable to western Massachusetts to offset the statistical skew of city driving. Admittedly, Providence itself is pretty bad, where seeing police cars blowing through red lights and stop signs without lights or siren is a daily occurrence.
However, the GMAC survey made no attempt to test actual driving ability or attitude, but simply competence to pass the written portion of the licensing test. The unusually complex traffic laws in Rhode Island, most of which are unfamiliar even to police officers charged with enforcing them, are a serious obstacle to driver education. For example, the CNN news story about the GMAC survey states, "Approximately one in three drivers said they usually do not stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. At least one out of five drivers did not know that pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right of way." However, as hard as it may be to believe, pedestrians do not necessarily have the right of way in Rhode Island just because they happen to be in a crosswalk! The rule in Rhode Island only gives pedestrians the right of way in a crosswalk if they are on the same half of the road as the driver, and then only in the absence of traffic control signals. (You can verify this in Section 31-18-3 of the Rhode Island General Laws.)
Other lacking knowledge exposed by the test is more obviously practical. For example, "At least 1 in 5 drivers do not know.... That highways are the most slippery just when it starts to rain after a dry spell. In fact, this is the question most often answered incorrectly for the second year in a row." That particular item of information is drummed into motorcylcists, for whom it is a life-or-death issue, but it is of basic importance to drivers of ordinary automobiles as well.
In the end, the blame for the terrible performance of Rhode Island drivers on the GMAC survey, scoring dead last two years in a row, cannot be entirely attributed to the drivers themselves nor to the complicated traffic laws, but is due in large part to the consistently awful driver training programs operated by the state to which high school students are typically subjected.