Driving Habits Across Canada

[middeljohn]

Since moving to Edmonton I've been kinda shocked at how courteous drivers are here. Very rarely do I get someone tailgating me. And even less often do I hear someone actually use their car horn. Generally when I want to get into another lane one of the first three cars gives me a turn (even when I obviously cheated to get past a whole bunch). Only thing here that annoys me is how seemingly 90% of the drivers drive below the posted speed limit. I've broken the habit of going 10-20 over like I did in Ontario, but I can't for the life of me understand how so many people will drive 80 on the Henday (100km/hr posted).

That said, in the GTA pretty much everything I just said is the opposite. If you don't turn within 2 seconds of the left turn light someone's honking at you. Typically takes 5 cars, sometimes more for someone to give you a turn to make a lane change. People generally drive 10-20 over, oftentimes more (only way to by get a ticket is from a cop). The far left lane generally goes the same speed as the far right lane (this one still confuses me)

These differences are mainly symptoms of congestion; Toronto is extremely congested, Edmonton is almost always free-flowing, so people are a little bit more relaxed.

Curious about other cities.

[FrAnKs]

I've heard many times Québec drivers are the worst.
Here, it doesn't take 10 seconds before you get someone in your ass.
It may be easy to argue that the reason is because we're French ( I've seen this comment many times ) ... but I don't believe it.

I've been to Nova-Scotia last summer and it was like another world. Soooo courteous.

[Klazu]

Metro Vancouver must be the area with most Ferrari, Aston Martin, etc. crashes in all of Canada. You really have to look out for those in here...

[manny_santos]

Kingston is a fairly easy city to drive in, and drivers are generally courteous to other drivers. In some areas drivers do go excessively slow, and yet on some streets drivers go 20 km/h over the limit.

However, for its size Kingston has a surprisingly large red light running problem. I also find drivers here are not very courteous to pedestrians. They turn at intersections without even looking, and just last week I was almost hit by one that drove onto the sidewalk.

[MonctonRad]

There's currently an epidemic of car/pedestrian MVA's in Halifax. It seems like there's 2-3 per day. It's been all over the news the whole year (yes, we get lots and lots of Halifax news on TV here in NB).

[sonysnob]

GTA drivers are aggressive. Because the roads are always so busy, there is seemingly always a fight for space on the highway.

If I come back from up north, or somewhere else away from the city, I am always startled by tailgaters as soon as I get back in range of the city.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by sonysnob

GTA drivers are aggressive. Because the roads are always so busy, there is seemingly always a fight for space on the highway.

If I come back from up north, or somewhere else away from the city, I am always startled by tailgaters as soon as I get back in range of the city.

Signalling an intended lane change is seen as a threat to impede your progress on traffic-clogged roads in Toronto. Cars in the adjacent lane will speed up to close the gap if they see anyone signalling. That's why you see a lot of sudden lane changes without signalling. Which feels brutish and harsh when you're travelling into the GTA from elsewhere.

Otherwise, though, traffic in southern Ontario generally moves at 30 km/h above the speed limit: 110 km/h on two-lane highways where the limit is 80 km/h, and 130 km/h on the 400 series highways where the limit is 100 km/h.

I've personally never experienced more courteous drivers than in Saskatchewan, where the difference from even neighbouring Manitoba was palpable. They veer onto the paved shoulder to allow you to pass if you come up behind them at a faster speed. It's really quite something. Of course, we're talking the Trans-Canada between Winnipeg and Regina, where you can drive for minutes at a time without seeing another car, so it's not exactly crowded!

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Kingston is a fairly easy city to drive in, and drivers are generally courteous to other drivers. In some areas drivers do go excessively slow, and yet on some streets drivers go 20 km/h over the limit.

Agreed. It depends on the street, it seems. Everyone goes way under on all the main arterials, and way over on the others. Johnson/Brock is notorious for speeding.. which is actually counterproductive because the lights on those streets are timed so you get non-stop greens if you go 50, and non-stop reds if you go 20 over. Ordnance & Queen Mary used to be major speeding zones until the city put the traffic calming in there.

Originally Posted by manny_santos

However, for its size Kingston has a surprisingly large red light running problem.

My god yes, it's an epidemic here. The city is aiming to buy red light cameras in the near future, so I hope this will change.

Originally Posted by manny_santos

I also find drivers here are not very courteous to pedestrians. They turn at intersections without even looking, and just last week I was almost hit by one that drove onto the sidewalk.

Odd.. I find the exact opposite. Pedestrians here rule the roost. Make it clear that you want to jaywalk mid-block (put one foot out) and everybody stops to let you through. At some intersections pedestrians cross against the light all the time, and nobody seems to care.. Union & University is the best example, avoid that intersection when driving like the plague. Though drivers do have a problem with not checking when turning, especially on the residential streets that people like to use as cut-throughs (like Patrick, Earl, or York).

Jaywalking in Kingston is a way of life. People do it ALL the time downtown. Which is odd because crossing the street legally in Downtown Kingston is super easy. There's a signalized crossing every 100 metres or so, and they all change every 20 seconds automatically with no need for push buttons. It's one of the things I immediately noticed when I started walking in Ottawa, it's much harder to cross the street legally in Ottawa as the lights take way longer to change (often requiring a button push), and they're much further apart because of the longer blocks. Whereas in Kingston annoying lights that take forever for pedestrians are found only in the suburbs, in Ottawa they're all like this even downtown.

Another thing I notice about Kingston is when turning left, many people illegally turn when the light is yellow. Some people do this in Ottawa but not nearly as many. In Kingston often you have no choice because so few intersections in the central area have left-turn signals.

People in both Ottawa & Kingston cannot zipper merge to save their lives. Half the congestion on the 417 in Ottawa is caused by this. If people knew how to merge and change properly, 417 would be free-flowing, I bet. I have very little experience driving in the GTA (only two or three times in my entire life) but from what I have seen people there are much better at it.

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

People in both Ottawa & Kingston cannot zipper merge to save their lives. Half the congestion on the 417 in Ottawa is caused by this. If people knew how to merge and change properly, 417 would be free-flowing, I bet. I have very little experience driving in the GTA (only two or three times in my entire life) but from what I have seen people there are much better at it.

I think this is a Canada wide problem.

[SignalHillHiker]

t's a mixed bag here. Two main points:

1. Drivers are courteous, if you're not an idiot. Put your blinker on to change lanes, you will get in within a car or two passing by. But change lanes without signaling, you'll get honked at and tailgated.

2. We generally only paint lines on the street within a half dozen or so metres of an intersection, and even those fade quickly. So if you pull up to an intersection, JUST ***ING ASSUME THERE IS A LEFT-TURN LANE. Because we treat almost all of them as if there is. There's no faster way to tell a tourist than you stopped at a light in the middle of a lane that is as wide as two cars. Pull over as far to the left as you can without blocking opposing traffic. This is just the main one of the quirks that develop in an old city with a nonsensical street grid and roads that were designed to be driven on the left.

This is true of wide streets:



And narrow ones (notice the faded turning lane - USE IT!)





Another is parking. Striped medians, grassy medians, etc. You can park on them all. But don't block fire lanes. Fires are a big fucking deal here. The smallest blaze is reported like a car chase in L.A. because our entire city can burn to the ground pretty quick, and has at least four times. DO NOT BLOCK THE FIRE LANES. It's like lighting up a smoke in a lung cancer ward. You will be lynched.

This is parking in St. John's, and I only filmed a few minutes on a Sunday. It's worse at basically any other time:

• Video Link

Excluding rush hour, traffic usually flows 10-30km over the speed limit, depending on the road. Generally, people keep accelerating as fast as they can go. If the distance between one light and next is long enough to get up to 70-80 in a 50-60 zone, do it. Flow with the traffic. Don't be that one idiot who goes the speed limit and everyone has to zip around.

[ssiguy]

Richmond and Vancouver are horrible and the Chinese drivers are in a league of their own.

One thing out here is that people drive painfully slow. Some of I guess can be blamed on having few freeways and the ones they have are thin but even still. Even when traffic is moving well people still drive incredibly slow. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves in Ontario or Quebec.

When traffic is heavy but still moving they drive MUCH slower than Easterners. Back east even when you are right up someone's ass you can still be driving fast but not in BC where people slow right down.

I actually find that Western Canadians in general drive much, much slower than Ontarians or Quebecers even though speed limits on freeways are higher in the West.

[vanman]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Richmond and Vancouver are horrible and the Chinese drivers are in a league of their own.

One thing out here is that people drive painfully slow. Some of I guess can be blamed on having few freeways and the ones they have are thin but even still. Even when traffic is moving well people still drive incredibly slow. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves in Ontario or Quebec.

When traffic is heavy but still moving they drive MUCH slower than Easterners. Back east even when you are right up someone's ass you can still be driving fast but not in BC where people slow right down.

I actually find that Western Canadians in general drive much, much slower than Ontarians or Quebecers even though speed limits on freeways are higher in the West.

I agree Vancouverites tend to drive ridiculously slow. Alot of the time under the speed limit even. It drives me nuts.

[Nashe]

SE NB has a lot of dangerously courteous people. They're in the oncoming lane and stop all traffic behind them to wave you left across their path, regardless of how many lanes of traffic are to their right. They also have trouble merging and will instead drive to the end of the merge lane and stop. On the plus side, you never have too much trouble "getting out" of a parking lot or laneway.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Vorkuta

SE NB has a lot of dangerously courteous people. They're in the oncoming lane and stop all traffic behind them to wave you left across their path, regardless of how many lanes of traffic are to their right. They also have trouble merging and will instead drive to the end of the merge lane and stop. On the plus side, you never have too much trouble "getting out" of a parking lot or laneway.

Speaking of dangerously courteous:

I drive very rarely so I don’t have the experience to draw from, but I have noticed some differences between my last city (Toronto) and current (Halifax) as a pedestrian, especially when jaywalking. On a Toronto street, I would simply wait for a significant break in the traffic so I could cross safely without darting or weaving between vehicles, or endangering myself or others.

Now, when I try to jaywalk in Halifax, especially downtown, I’ll often found myself standing at the side of the road, obviously waiting for a break in traffic, when a driver will stop suddenly and motion to me to cross. Then a whole bunch of cars behind him will also be forced to stop abruptly while I cross in the middle of the street.

Is it Maritime hospitality? Maybe. I’ve also thought that it may simply also be the driers are less used to pedestrians—the city isn’t as congested with pedestrians, and more drivers here are from rural rather than urban or suburban areas.

But it’s a strange thing to me, because while I was trying to insinuate my jaywalking effortlessly into the flow of traffic, now it’s turned into a big production and it’s holding up traffic, which I never intended. I'm used to fitting myself into the rhythms of other road users, whereas here, road users unexpectedly alter their rhythms in a way they believe is accommodating and polite but is actually jarring and unexpected and maybe dangerous.

And even in my limited driving experience here, I've encountered a lot of the old "you go first, no you go first" stuff at uncontrolled four-way intersections, where a driver who has the right of way INSISTS I go first. Just follow the rules, people, and stop being so damn polite.

[mcmcclassic]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Speaking of dangerously courteous:

Now, when I try to jaywalk in Halifax, especially downtown, I’ll often found myself standing at the side of the road, obviously waiting for a break in traffic, when a driver will stop suddenly and motion to me to cross. Then a whole bunch of cars behind him will also be forced to stop abruptly while I cross in the middle of the street.

Is it Maritime hospitality? Maybe. I’ve also thought that it may simply also be the driers are less used to pedestrians—the city isn’t as congested with pedestrians, and more drivers here are from rural rather than urban or suburban areas.

But it’s a strange thing to me, because while I was trying to insinuate my jaywalking effortlessly into the flow of traffic, now it’s turned into a big production and it’s holding up traffic, which I never intended. I'm used to fitting myself into the rhythms of other road users, whereas here, road users unexpectedly alter their rhythms in a way they believe is accommodating and polite but is actually jarring and unexpected and maybe dangerous.

And even in my limited driving experience here, I've encountered a lot of the old "you go first, no you go first" stuff at uncontrolled four-way intersections, where a driver who has the right of way INSISTS I go first. Just follow the rules, people, and stop being so damn polite.

This annoys me to no end when I'm driving in the city (cars stopping in the middle of the street). One thing I've noticed recently is that pedestrians in Halifax seem to think they ALWAYS have the right of way when in fact it is a shared responsibility of cars and pedestrians. Take for example what happened to me last week:

I was on a section of Gottingen St. (2 lanes each way for those unfamiliar) and a transit bus pulled over in the right lane to let a passenger off (obviously normal for a bus). I was in the left lane and was about to pass the bus when all of a sudden that transit passenger was in front of my car - nearly mowed the lady over. She yelled at me and said "YOU HAVE TO STOP FOR THE BUS!" I yelled back "that's not a school bus you were on!" This story and many others like are probably reasons behind why pedestrians are getting hit multiple times a day.

My other gripe with the roadways here (both in Halifax and everywhere in NS) is that people either drive too slow or they straddle the lines/drive up the centre line. I nearly got side swiped because of a driver drifting into my lane and on the weekend my wife and I watched a guy drift into the median divider and it wasn't until he hit that he realized he was not in the right spot...

*end rant*

[Beedok]

Ottawa drivers sometimes don't seem to realise that intersections aren't normal road. Especially downtown. So many times where there's a bunch of cars sitting in the middle of one with a red light so the street with a green light can't move.

Hamilton drivers seem to love their green waves.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Beedok

Ottawa drivers sometimes don't seem to realise that intersections aren't normal road. Especially downtown. So many times where there's a bunch of cars sitting in the middle of one with a red light so the street with a green light can't move.

This is a major problem in downtown Kingston, particularly at Princess and Ontario, and Ontario and Queen.

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Odd.. I find the exact opposite. Pedestrians here rule the roost. Make it clear that you want to jaywalk mid-block (put one foot out) and everybody stops to let you through. At some intersections pedestrians cross against the light all the time, and nobody seems to care..

I've had a lot of close calls as a pedestrian in and near downtown Kingston, all when crossing legally at a green light. In one case I ended up calling the police after almost getting hit by an SUV at Johnson and Clarence Streets. The absolute worst intersection for pedestrians is Division and Queen, where drivers act like it's their God-given right to turn regardless of any pedestrians crossing (legally). I've recently been in contact with the new mayor, Bryan Paterson about that intersection and he agrees there's a problem there.

I agree on the zipper merge issue, Kingston drivers are horrible at it. London wasn't much better.

Originally Posted by hipster duck

One thing I noticed about Montreal is that a red light is simultaneously timed with a green light for traffic on the intersecting cross street. In other words, you can't run a red light in Montreal the way you can in other cities, or use the 2 seconds of red in both directions to complete a left turn.

Is this a Quebec thing? I haven't driven in Quebec outside of Montreal - at least not in areas where there are lots of traffic lights (i.e. on surface roads in built up urban areas).

The only other place I've ever seen a lack of delay is in Mexico.

[ssiguy]

I really should add a caveat to wait I said about Ontario drivers. It's all true with the notable exception of Londoners where even reaching the speed limit is nearly miraculous due to the city's horrific traffic. Trying to negotiate London's roads and traffic is like Chinese Water Torture.

[esquire]

Winnipeg is known for fairly aggressive driving. It is always mind blowing to cross the border into the US where people are generally pretty courteous... in smaller cities, it's just the way they are, and in bigger cities it's a necessity because if people in places like Minneapolis and Chicago drove the way they do here there would be road carnage on an unprecedented scale. So they let you in when you signal or merge and all those good things.

Funny thing about Manitoba is that there are no true freeways so there is not a strong culture of using the left lane only to pass... quite often people will putter along in the passing lane on a divided highway in anticipation of their left turn 10 km ahead. This means that when you're driving in neighbourhing states with limited-access highways, whenever you see a car going slow in the left lane, 9 times out of 10 it's a Canadian and probably someone with Manitoba plates.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by esquire

...whenever you see a car going slow in the left lane, 9 times out of 10 it's a Canadian and probably someone with Manitoba plates.

Well, hold on, no...Ontario drivers are religious about getting out of the passing lane, while Americans in neighbouring states like New York and Michigan will tootle along in the passing lane at 90 km/h.

I've actually had to remind myself not to get too uptight on New York highways, as the locals don't take kindly to Ontario drivers insisting that slow drivers get out of the passing lane.

Once, on the 401 somewhere around Kingston, where it's just two lanes, I honked at and tailgated an American doing 90 km/h in the passing lane for about ten minutes. It was unbelievable. I had a km-long dragon's tail of other irritated drivers behind me wanting to speed the fuck up.

She finally sped up and got over, and then gave me a death stare as I passed. She thought I was crazy and dangerous. I thought she was crazy and dangerous. And stupid.