In truth, it's not that Boston drivers are that much worse than some of their peers elsewhere. The difficulty of the course (which is to say, the Boston streets) helps makes them seem more frightening than they actually are. While you're struggling to avoid that gaping axle-breaker up ahead, the Boston driver has memorized its location (because it's opened up like a roadway Crater Lake in that same spot for the last nine years) and is unconsciously zipping around it at his normal driving speed -- which is to say a hell of a lot faster than you're going. The fact that you're driving at something approaching a sane speed simply means that you're another obstacle to be cursed and worked around, like a pothole, a traffic light or a kid crossing the street at anything less than a dead run.

Now, that isn't to say that Boston drivers aren't lousy in their own way. It's just that their way isn't what everyone expects. After all, say the words "Boston driver" to anyone outside of Boston and you'll conjure up images of a homicidal, frothing maniac hell-bent on running everyone else off the road for the sheer pleasure of recreating the explosions from the opening credits of Speed Racer. In truth, Boston drivers are keenly aware of the low esteem and absolute terror in which they are held by the rest of the country, and thus feel compelled to live up to that standard. If they are to be called maniacs, then maniacs they will be. They shall push themselves to greater and greater feats of automotive lunacy -- say, taking the Jamaica Pond Loop at 75 in a snowstorm -- because it is expected of them as Boston drivers. They shall go as fast as their tires allow, and then if their passengers aren't gripping their Jesus bars for dear life, they'll go faster. Why? Because it's expected, and certainly not because they're a bunch of rude, pushy sociopaths who feel its their God-given right to pound along that aging infrastructure at a rate of speed guaranteed to speed the whole thing's collapse.

(And then there's the issue of the strange field that Boston radiates that strips all who enter its borders of the ability to parallel park successfully. That, however, is the city's fault, and thus won't be laid at the feet of the drivers.)

In conclusion, then, the Boston driver can be picked out by several defining traits: The need to go far faster than conditions safely allow, the need to outrace anyone else on the road, and the use of the term "That was wicked retahded, you fahkin cakhsuckah."

If the car's stopped in the middle of an intersection, or just moving very slowly, it's probably got a New Yorker in it. Otherwise, New Yorkers tend to pick up the bad habits of whatever other region they move to, just more loudly than most.

The average Philadelphia makes the mistake of thinking too much while driving. Moreover, each thinks exactly the same thing: "That light up ahead is green. It's been green for a while. It will probably turn red by the time I get there, so I shouldn't hurry and then have to slam on the brakes. Oh, look, I'm almost at the intersection and it's just turned yellow. Time to floor it!"

Of course, this means that whoever is following this driver gets stuck behind someone doing 20 in a 45 MPH zone up to the intersection itself, at which point Pokey the Turtle suddenly floors it and leaves the poor bastard fuming at the light which, had both cars been doing the speed limit, both would have made handily. This is why so many Philadelphia mafiosi get stuffed into Hefty bags and car trunks in South Philly; not because of mob violence, but because they're particularly emphatic practicioners of this driving technique.

The last bit of driving inanity endemic to Philadelphia is a simple function of gravity. Simply put, Philadelphia drivers never quite grasped the notion that in order to maintain speed as you go up a hill, you have to press down harder on the gas pedal. That means that anyone who hits a hill in Philly at 65 is doing 55, tops, by the time he indeed gets to the top. The car behind him, to avoid crawling up his tailpipe, meanwhile slows to 53. The guy behind him slows to 50. And so it goes until there's a line of traffic that stretches for miles, the rumbling of the engines somehow masking the words "I think I can, I think I can." (If one notes that the tallest hill in the Philadelphia highway system is all of about 50 feet, the fact that it can back traffic up for literally six miles during off-peak traffic hours becomes even more astounding.)

Still, it's not just the drivers' fault. Philadelphia does boast one of the worst-designed major highway interchanges in the country, as well as an antiquated street grid, a bizarre collection of highway projects and limited space for new traffic arteries. On the other hand, the drivers don't help...

However, what local drivers there are in Hotlanta share two common flaws. The first is an intense desire to rubberneck. This, sadly, is communicable, and generally infects new arrivals after a week. Furthermore, Atlanta rubbernecking is an order of magnitude worse than rubbernecking anywhere else in the country. Nowhere but Atlanta will the sight of an opossum smeared across four lanes of traffic bring drivers screeching to a halt. Worse yet, the slowdown and inevitable near-pileups that result are not because of concern for the critter, or worries about safety. No, every driver in Atlanta is convinced that because he's paying attention to the road, he's missing something else that's neat. And so, anything that catches his eye while he's driving, whether it be roadkill, a stopped car, an attractive pedestrian, a nonattractive pedestrian or a sparkly thing on the sidewalk, makes an Atlanta driver slow down and look away from the road. The next driver slows down more, first to avoid rear ending the first idiot and then because he, too is captivated by the sparkly thing, and the whole process rapidly mutates into a 45 minute backup.

The other Atlanta automotive epidemic is unique to natives. After all, the so-called "snowbirds" generally come to Atlanta fleeing snow, but they at least know how to drive in it. Not so the natives. These people flock to the local Winn Dixie (all of the local Piggly Wiggly supermarkets have seemingly gone under, alas) at the first sign of midwinter clouds, there to stock up on (no joke) bottled water, batteries and condoms. (Author's note: The first two, at least, make sense. Atlanta's pipes and power lines aren't built for the cold, much less any sort of winter precipitation, so it's a good idea to have water on hand for when your idiot neighbor bursts the water main by forgetting to leave a faucet dripping. The condoms, however, you'd think they'd stock up on beforehand.) However, once the first flakes who aren't elected to city office come tumbling down, something horrible happens. Every native Georgian with a 4x4 decides that if he paid for four wheel drive, by gum, he's gonna use it in that snow stuff. After all, he's seen those commercials with the Lenny Kravitz song in the background, and he knows that all he has to do is gun the engine and he'll be fine. As all of you who've ever driven in snow know, the proper response to this sort of attitude is "Oops." Well, either that or hearty laughter from a safe distance. For my own part, I preferred to drive past innumerable SUVs stranded on the side of the road and occasionally inverted, while their proud owners cussed and waited for AAA. Sometimes I'd wave.

Addendum: Atlanta drivers can't drive in the rain, either. This wouldn't be so bad except that it rains all the time in Atlanta. Sometimes, when residents are lucky, the water even drains somewhere. Betting on this, however, is a losing game.