New York City Drivers Become Vicious

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 2:41AM EDT · Published Jun 16, 5:06AM EDT

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ford New York City is choked with more than eight million people, many of whom have to drive to work on highways meant to accommodate traffic levels of the 1930s. The bridges and tunnels into Manhattan often have back-ups that push waiting times to an hour or more.

On top of the normal frustration of driving in New York is the added factor that many of the people who are in cars, are heading for job interviews where they are likely to be disappointed

Is it any wonder, then, that New York City drivers are now the most vicious in the US, replacing those in Miami to take the prize? According to Reuters, mounting frustration “gave New Yorkers the prize for angriest, most aggressive drivers who tailgate, speed, honk their horns, overreact and lose their tempers.”

As the taxbase in New York shrinks, to a large extent because of all the high paid investment bankers who are no longer employed, the transportation situation could get worse. The MTA, which runs the subways and other parts of the public system, is nearly out of money and has been forced to announce higher fares. New York City highways and streets are so old that they are under constant repair which creates bottle-necks which cause even more traffic congestion. The city needs more subway tunnels and widened roads, but the shrinking municipal cash balance is likely to make that impossible. Layoffs of NYC workers have already started.

The frustration and violence among New York City drivers may be rising, but it has not even come close to peaking.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.