So many cities; so many rivalries. Houstonians seem to view Dallas with contempt, while Dallasites claim not to think about Houston at all. Most San Antonians could happily live the rest of their lives without hearing anything else about Austin. West Texans would like folks along the Interstate 35 corridor to remember that they exist. But when it comes to driving, many Texans express their rivalries in a curious way: rather than insist that motorists in the cities we most despise are terrible, we tend to insist our own cities breed the worst drivers.
Actual data related to driving quality often employs dubious methods and arbitrary criteria to draw sweeping conclusions. So to explore the question of which part of Texas actually has the worst drivers, we convened a panel of opinionated and fully licensed Texas Monthly editors and writers who live, or have lived, all over the state and let them argue it out, moderated by senior editor (and New York City native) Ben Rowen.
Ben Rowen: Can you quickly credential yourselves? Are you all qualified to speak on bad drivers because you are good at driving, or is this a “takes one to know one” situation?
Michael Hardy, senior editor and Houston resident: I have not had an accident since 2013.
Dan Solomon, senior editor and Austinite: I am a safe driver. I am usually in the right-hand lane. I go the speed limit. When you do the math on how much time you save speeding, it really is a very silly thing to do.
Allegra Hobbs, senior editor, Dallas native, and former West Texas resident: I am an aggressive driver, but I would argue decisiveness is part of what makes someone good at driving—no hesitation!
Sandi Villarreal, deputy editor, digital, a San Antonio resident: My only accident was the time a cab driver rear-ended me in the Chicago snow.
Russell Gold, senior editor and frequent visitor to Houston and West Texas: I had an impeccable driving record for decades, until I gently rear-ended a Porsche in 2022.
Forrest Wilder, senior editor and Austinite: The less said about my driving, the better.
BR: It’s my impression that lots of Texans think their cities have the worst drivers. Is there anyone here who doesn’t feel that way?
AH: I’m from Dallas and will die on the hill that we have more bad drivers than any place in the nation. There’s all these enormous pickups careening wildly between lanes with no turn signals like they’re racing to the scene of a crime, but they’re probably just trying to make it to Topgolf.
FW: I’ve lived in the Austin area for thirty years and can say definitively that Austin drivers are the worst. It seems like a third of Austin either drives a Cybertruck with a vanity plate that says “FUTRTRK” or a 1983 Volvo with a “Dog Is My Co-pilot” bumper sticker, and none of them have the slightest regard for laws or common sense.
MH: As a native Houstonian, I take a perverse pride in believing that Houston has the worst drivers in the country. Pick a metric: most reckless, most asleep, least considerate, least interested in self-preservation. I’ve lived in Texas, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, and nowhere else have I seen as much of the insanity I routinely see on Houston roadways. I’ve seen drivers going the wrong way up a freeway exit ramp. Drivers cutting across multiple lanes of traffic to make a left. Drivers making turns directly in front of a bus at full speed.
RG: At least if you don’t like the driver in front of you in Houston, you have sixteen other lanes to choose from. In the Permian Basin, any margin for error is eliminated by narrow roads potholed from overuse. And still, everyone speeds. It’s like Mad Max out there.
SV: I actually think San Antonio drivers are just fine. See y’all later.
BR: Are a city’s drivers bad in certain ways? Is it possible, say, that Houston has the most lane switchers who don’t signal but Dallas has the most tailgaters?
AH: As someone who recently moved to Austin, I’ve observed drivers here are almost the opposite of those in Dallas. Too many Dallas drivers operate as if their goal is to cause as much destruction and mayhem as possible on their commute. Many Austin drivers are so sedate it can become dangerous. They can take a full sixty seconds to change lanes. They sometimes can’t seem to decide which lane they want to be in, so they opt for two at a time—a laid-back approach to driving that could have disastrous consequences. I routinely see drivers going 10 miles per hour below the speed limit. Looking at you, Dan Solomon! In Dallas, if you’re going 20 over, you’re still getting passed by teenagers who think they’re John Wick.
FW: Many Houston drivers are extremely aggressive but far more competent than those in Austin. Do not attempt to drive in Houston in a 1983 Volvo.
MH: I don’t know if y’all have observed this in other cities, but the COVID pandemic seems to have made driving even more hazardous. It’s every car and truck for itself. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as society anymore, only individual drivers.
DS: When I was researching my recent story on bad driving, I found that there’s actually quite a bit of research on the pandemic’s impact, and it’s definitely not just a Houston thing, or even a Texas thing, or even just an American thing. They’re driving worse in Australia these days, too. The pandemic continues to affect public health in many ways, but its effect on our roads is one of the most insidious. Studies have found that we’re more aggressive, we pay less attention, and we engage in risky driving behaviors more frequently than we did in 2019.
BR: Russell raised an interesting point earlier. Houston drivers have more lanes to be bad in than those in Austin. It’s certainly easier to hit a double in Fenway than in Wrigley. How much of bad driving is opportunity-based?
FW: I think one reason Austin drivers are so dysfunctional is that it’s a big city with the highway infrastructure of a city a tenth its size. There are only two highways to speak of—I-35 straddles the east side of downtown and MoPac the west. Meanwhile, Houston is working on, what, its third ring road? Dallas is essentially a network of toll roads to speed residents from Neiman Marcus to Jerry World.
AH: In Dallas, the highway system necessitates that you become a very aggressive driver. I’m now thinking about the interchange between I-35 and I-30, which is nightmare-inducing.
MH: I think the only reason Houston’s freeways aren’t even deadlier is that they’re often too congested for anyone to speed. Ten lanes, twelve lanes, sixteen lanes—doesn’t matter; they’re nearly always backed up anyway. You’ll often see drivers commandeer the shoulder as an extra lane at times of peak traffic. As a rule, Houstonians drive as fast as they can at all times. Fortunately for them, that’s often not very fast.
RG: I’ve lived in San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin and have driven a lot in Houston. San Antonio drivers seem more polite, but I’m pretty sure that if I die on a Texas road, it will be on San Antonio’s Loop 410. It’s fast and chaotic. Everyone is more focused on making sure their Spurs pendants are displayed correctly from the rearview mirror than on anything else.
SV: Fair, Russell. San Antonio drivers will wave you in; they’ll change lanes to avoid someone stalled on the shoulder. They make it nice. But the constant “improvement” projects to highways and interchanges that were built with seemingly zero expectation for growth, along with the Loop 1604 expansion that will never end, have given us a certain “whatever” mentality when it comes to common sense. Speaking of the Spurs, anyone wanna go honking?
RG: Not sure what “going honking” means, but my most pleasant driving-in-Texas memory is the night the Spurs won their first championship and I and a bunch of friends piled into the back of a pickup truck and drove around downtown.
SV: Was there honking?
RG: Honking, hooting, and hollering.
SV: Then you went honking.
BR: Okay, we’ve focused on which places are worst to drive in, given other bad drivers or bad roads, but that is only one part of the picture. Which city would you least like to be a pedestrian in? Or a biker?
DS: I feel infinitely better when riding a bike in Austin than I’d feel in Dallas or Houston. Yeah, someone might lackadaisically merge lanes into you without looking, but at least they’re only going 12 miles an hour—we’re talking bruises, not instant death. The handful of times I’ve ridden a bike on even a small residential street in Dallas or Houston, I’ve felt much more like I was taking my life in my hands than I do zipping around downtown Austin.
FW: I actually have to commend Austin for building a considerable amount of bike infrastructure—bike lanes, bike signals, et cetera—over the last two decades. But many car drivers now treat bike lanes as convenient places to pull over and text, or to drop passengers off. Still, Austin is the most bikeable city in Texas.
MH: According to a recent study, Galveston is the state’s most dangerous large city for pedestrians, followed by Beaumont and Dallas.
DS: Most of those studies are dubious, but the trends in terms of raw data tell us that it’s generally worse to be a pedestrian or cyclist now than it’s been in a long time. Blame the size of vehicles these days as a leading culprit. If a sedan hits you, you could break your legs. If a Suburban with a front end that comes up to your shoulder hits you, well, it’s been nice knowing you. Combine that with the way the pandemic made some of us a little bit sociopathic when we get behind the wheel, and it’s not a great time to be on the road outside of a car! There is a little bit of evidence emerging that pedestrian deaths are starting to fall from the post-2020 peak, but just walking around is still significantly more dangerous now than it was in 2019.
AH: I was almost hit by an Austin driver while crossing the street. She waved at me afterward, though.
