Sunday's snowfall piqued the curiosity of a local blogger.
St. Paul may be the seat of King Boreas, lord of wind and winter, but that doesn't stop Minneapolis drivers from becoming terrible drivers every time it snows. Part of the problem, of course, is pure physics. Slippery roads can make for sliding cars. Sunday's snow caused 367 crashes, 48 crash-related injuries, 299 spun-out cars, and 3 jacknifed tractor-trailers. But what about the human factor? Could there be something that happens to local motorists that exacerbates the situation? That question piqued the curiosity of David Levinson, a University of Minnesota professor and blogger at Streets.MN. Mining academic research on driver behavior, Levinson came up with a pithy—if quick-and-dirty—analysis of the issue. "So I wouldn’t say we become…
To add a marker, just click on the blue "Add" button on the map's upper-right corner. Then, click on the intersection you want to identify and hit "submit" in the dialogue box that pops up.
Earlier this month, the City of Minneapolis released a study of car crash statistics that had some striking results: a great many collisions between bicycles and automobiles were the fault of both the cyclist and the driver involved. Red pins in the map above mark the worst intersections for bike-car crashes. Depending on where your views lie on the car-versus-bike question, the results might not have been all that surprising. The study, which analyzed data from 2000 to 2010, found that many drivers caused crashes by not yielding to bikes when they should under state law. It also said that many cyclists caused accidents by "riding in an unpredictable manner," doing things like running traffic lights or riding on the wrong side of the road…
CHDaggett
9:55 am on Tuesday, January 29, 2013
I grew up in MN and also have to agree - forget any notion of 'Minnesotat Nice' once behind the wheel of a car. I've done road trips through many other states and hands down MN drivers are consistently the worst I've encountered. Even in NYC where the traffic is clearly much heavier. In addition to all the point Rachel made is the refusal of MN drivers to turn on their headlights. Attitude seems … more ›