Maryland has some of the worst drivers in America. If you are traveling north-south, you will be on I-95 through the state. This means you will spend a lot of time behind someone in the left lane driving below the speed limit. You are going along at 70 mph until you come up on someone doing 55. You then have to get around them by passing them in the center lane. Maybe there will be a line of cars stacked up behind the idiot, as drivers figure out how to get around the rolling road block. It’s the craziest thing, a common site.
Another oddity of the state is the person driving in your blind spot. They camp out on your passenger side usually, just off fender. You speed up, they speed up. You slow down, they slow down. What’s really crazy about it is you can speed up to 90 and they will keep up with you. Not always, but I’ve had this happen more than once. You’re trying to get over to the right and they just sit in that blind spot. The only way to shake them out of this is to cut them off. You get the one finger solute as they pass you.
The crazier version of this is the combination of the rolling roadblock and they slow down speed up guy.You 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. Talk to locals about this and they will get indignant. Being a roadway vigilante is the divine right around here.
Of course, part of this and other weird habits is the extreme provincialism you see in the Baltimore area. People in small states often have a stubborn localism. I’ve met people in Rhode Island who have never left the state. That’s close to impossible, given that a wrong turn takes you over a state line. In Baltimore, there are lots of people who have never left the state. I know college graduates who went to college in the state and got a jobs that never require travel. Such isolation inevitably results in weird habits and attitudes.
There’s another aspect that is peculiar to Maryland. Baltimore has a very high number of dullards. 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. Maryland ranks 32. A safe bet is that the Baltimore area is below the state average and the smart fraction is very thin. A big part of it is the demographics, but another piece of the puzzle may be the lead paint problem.
On the other hand, Rhode Island ranks 33 on the IQ list and they don’t have the demographic challenges nor the bizarre driving habits, but maybe they have other strange habits with which I am unfamiliar. On the other other hand, Baltimore used to be a city dependent on low-skill labor. It could simply be a carry over from when the city was a natural magnet for the stupid looking for work. It;s hard to know, but I do know I have never experienced the combination of dullness and provincialism anywhere else.
