One of things that strikes as you drive through the state of Maryland is the weird driving. If you are traveling north-south, you will be on I-95 through the state. You will also spend a lot of time behind someone in the left lane driving below the speed limit. You will also find you regularly have someone deliberately driving in your blind spot. You speed up, they speed up. You slow down, they slow down. The crazier thing is you will come up on a slow poke in the left lane. You decide to pass using the middle lane. They will speed up as you pass trying to remain in your blind spot. They were doing 55 and then they force you to crack 100 to get around them. Once you get by them, they slow down again and disappear into the rear view.
Spend time in the state and you quickly figure out what’s going on. There is a combination of provincialism and dullness you rarely see elsewhere. Rhode Island has a bit of this. In both cases you have a small state surrounded by large culturally and economically dominant states. That explains the provincialism. I’ve met people from Maryland and Rhode Island who have never left the state. I’ve met college graduates who never leave the state. They take their vacations at home. They work in jobs that do not require travel because they simply have no interest in anything outside the state. The result is strange customs like the weird driving habits. I’ve often chuckled while driving in neighboring states when I see a long line of cars in the left lane behind one car with Maryland plates. The poor guy must be freaking out.
There’s another piece and that’s the dullness. Central Maryland has a very high number of dimwits. I don’t just mean the slack-jawed yokel type. I’ve met college graduates with a dimness that you would normally associate with the back woods. Out of curiosity I looked up IQ by state. The first link was this one. It seems to jive with what Steve Sailer has reported. He’s one of the most reliable writers on the subject so I assume it a good estimate. Looking through the list I see Maryland is 32 and and Rhode Island 33. If I were to guess, central Maryland, the Baltimore – Washington corridor, is below the state average and the smart fraction is very thin. It is not Detroit thin, but those with an above average IQ will be lonely.