Walking in the "Angriest" Town

The other day, Elizabeth and I were walking the dogs home from the lake. While we waited to cross the moderately busy street from the park to our residential neighborhood, a rare thing occurred: A driver who saw us stopped his car and waved us across. When we reached the other side of the street, we turned to each other and simultaneously noted, "He must have gone to school in Gainesville."

Elizabeth is a Florida Gator; I have spent some time in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, working as an item writer/validator for the Florida Department of Education. The one thing that a visitor to Gainesville immediately notices is that drivers willingly share the road with pedestrians. While there, if I so much as looked over my shoulder to gauge street-crossing potential, motorists would stop their cars. I'm not sure if the police ticket heavily at the beginning of a new academic year or if the city culture values pedestrians and models that behavior to newcomers. I have never felt on guard in Gainesville as I do here in Orlando, where the morning news has another hit-and-run pedestrian fatality to report at least once a week. In my city, motorists will run down cops and leave the scene. Here, we walk at our own risk, and I would require a gun to my head to ride a bicycle anywhere in the city.

The danger I have felt on the roads—both in a car and on foot—is not imagined, I recently learned. According to Men's Health magazine, Orlando is the angriest city in the entire country. This top spot was determined in part by traffic-congestion data, speeding citations, and road-rage reports; the ranking does not surprise the residents. Most people do not signal their intentions or yield the right of way. Many of them are blabbing away on a cell phone, oblivious that other drivers share the road. Stopping at a new red light means running the risk of being rear ended, as the general road philosophy is that 3 to 5 cars can continue through the intersection after the light has changed. Cops choose to pull over 60-year-old women driving 4 miles over the speed limit to meet their ticket quota because the more aggressive drivers might roll down the window and start firing a gun.

Since Elizabeth and I carpool to work, we get to observe and analyze a lot of bad driving behavior. We have concluded that an asshole pilots 1 in 4 vehicles; some days we raise the percentage to 1 in 2.

Just the other evening, I got to witness a bout of driver rage that inspired anger in me as well. Bug and I had gone for the long walk, which includes a quarter-mile stretch of road that parallels the back of the downtown graveyard. Motorists used to exceed the speed limit, racing down this long stretch which was unbroken by a single stop sign. The city eventually erected a series of speed bumps to discourage the bad behavior.

As Bug and I were strolling down this road, a truck squealed out from a feeder street and came barreling in our direction. Right before the first speed bump, the driver slammed on his brakes, but not in enough time to keep the front bumper from scraping on the asphalt after he hurtled over the hump. I could see him cursing inside the cab, his face an angry storm. "Well, that will show him not to drive like an asshole in my neighborhood," I thought, assuming that he was just cutting through. He rammed the accelerator again, sending the car lurching forward a few yards before he came squealing into the driveway that Bug and I were about to cross. Two or three feet further along and Bug and I would have been struck. Incredulous, I stood there on the sidewalk. The driver wouldn't exit the truck—I assume that the near-miss had shamed him—so I mouthed "Asshole" in the direction of the rearview mirror and kept walking. His roommate/girlfriend/wife, having heard all of the engine reving and tire sqealing, ran out of the house, asking, "Are you mad about something?" I pity the woman if she has made a life-long commitment to that loser.

This situation was closer to wrong place, wrong time than usual, but every moment as a pedestrian in this city gives me ample evidence that yes, we are angry here in Orlando.