I love Minnesota Drivers. They are polite; they merge flawlessly and without honking horns. They obey traffic signals. Not like the Bay Area where driving can be a cross between a game of chicken and a combat sport. Everyone for themselves and watch out! I can’t blame diversity, transplants or immigrants although we have more than enough of all of the above. The laid back California attitude simply vanishes when someone gets behind the wheel of a car.
Never in Berkeley would someone stop and let you out from a parking spot at the curb simply because you signaled and were waiting for side traffic to clear. Wouldn’t see drivers being careful to always pass on the left. Perhaps Minnesota has a soporific effect on its residents. The politeness and reserve extending to insuring that you don’t interfere with anyone else on the road.
Or maybe it is the long cold winters that instills both a hardiness and a sense of community responsibility. In any case, it was a pleasure driving from the airport to my friends house. Not something I can say often in California.
Perhaps only in towns, but we drove into MN today and the freeway drivers act as if they learned in CA! Cutting people off, tail gating, and all. sigh In town, it seems to match what you said.
When we moved here, the word you always heard was mellow. Northern Californians are mellow–as in, we’re not like those people in SoCal and our freeways aren’t either.
That’s still only true to the degree that theirs have gotten worse since then and I haven’t heard that word used to describe here in 25 years.