Where is your least favorite place to drive?

Of late, my Least Favourite is intersection of Comm Ave and Harvard St. in Brookline, MA, USA. I *used* to hate Kenmore Square in Boston, MA, USA because N roads go in one and and M-different-from-N roads come out the other end. oh, and M and N were not constant. I swear to you. But I"m better now.

Lisa: do a cross-stitch of them all and then go on Fox nightly news with it. Get the registrar of motor vehicles to do a photo-op with you and swear that he/she will do something about it.

okay.

Kelly Square in Worcester. Anywhere in or around or resembling Boston.

I can't think of any particular intersection that I hate. I don't like any rotary though. and I don't like the fact that almost no one seems to know proper protocol for a 4 way stop sign.

The only places that have ever given me problems are rotary's in Scotland because I have to go around them the "wrong" way. I didn't mind being on the left side of the road or having to shift gears with my left hand but rotary's backwards really hurt my head.

I hate city driving in general. But the two absolute worst places have to be the circle around the Arch de Triumph (auto insurance will not cover you there!) and Rome (just utter insanity).

(This survey is a bit of an experiment... I'm still not sure how well it'll work, but it seemed worth a try. If you hate it, be gentle. :)

Two places get mentions for me:

• Interstate 93 in the very heart of Boston. Too twisty, too fast, and way too packed with cars. This is the road to Hell.
• Route 101 in southern New Hampshire. Two lane undivided highway, straight as an arrow (so people constantly drive about 70), and peppered with crosses off to the side of the road, where fatal collisions have occurred in the past. Hoo-rah. Just what my nerves needed...

Honorable mention goes to any rotary in Massachussets. (I -liked- them in Maine...)

*** LIZZIE: Hey, I drove the Bronx Expressway just a few months ago, on the way to a wedding in Jersey. It wasn't that bad. (Mind you, if the car had died on that highway, I'd be singing a different tune...)

I guess, I really hate Kenmore Sq during a game...but that is about it.

Spaghetti Junction. I doubt it's nearly as bad as something in a big city, but it's bad enough, especially since I positively despise driving in/around/near (or being in for very long at all, for that matter) cities. Whoever designed Louisville's roads must have been on something anyhow. When we're going very far I usually encourage someone else to drive, so I don't have to deal with it. Especially if we're dealing with cities. I'm entirely too good at watching the turn I know I have to take zipping past...

Highway 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz. Unless I'm in a Miata. Then it's like bumper cars. Otherwise, it's a lot of cars driven by stressed out people trying to get home as fast as possible on a two lane too narrow road that twists and turns way too much. I really dislike it (unless the Miata option applies :)

I used to live in Virginia, and one Thanksgiving I decided to visit some relatives in northern West Virginia. Instead of the interstate, I stupidly took a "shortcut" highway. It's amazing that my car did not slide off a cliff. That has to be the utmost curviest, right-angled, up-and-down-the-mountains road and with a little snow for extra pleasure. I also had to pee very badly but was afraid to stop on the side of the road because there were so many hunters' tents and trucks (deer hunting season, I guess), I was afraid that I might get shot or raped (I was alone). Very frightening experience - not recommended.

Where route 9 in Natick MASS USA connects with Speen Street heading towards rt 30. It's this 2 lane, high-speed, one-way, almost a rotary kind of thing. It's only bad if you are going from rt 9 to an industrial park on the other side (which I had to do every day for a few years), it involved crossing 2 lanes of high-speed one-way traffic to get to work - sometimes I just couldn't make and would have to go around again...

I like to drive. No matter where.

As a driver: Kelly Square in Worcester is pretty brutal. As my brother always told me, "Close your eyes, and go!" I also hate the off ramp from 290 onto Route 146 (the way we go to Purgatory) because it is so confusing whether or not you are supposed to stop or go! Actually, Route 146 until you get out away from Worcester a bit sucks a lot. Too many places for people to turn on and off. The old Jamestown bridge in Rhode Island was pretty piss poor too. Good thing it is gone now!

As a passenger: on-ramps in New York. 100 feet of merging space after a 180 degree hairpin turn, followed by a BRIDGE ABUTMENT. God help you if you don't hage the guts to merge! Also, the Bronx Expressway in NY, on the way to the GW bridge. *shudder*

***TRUSS: You weren't on the Bronx Expressway on Thanksgiving Day, trying to get to auntie's house in New Jersey.

Hmm. I'd say Kelly Square in Worcester. It's six streets (two that are one-way, one in each direction) kind of merging into a long drawn-out intersection, with only stop signs for traffic control. One of the streets is a bridge over the highway, with an on-ramp just before it.
The big problem is that you have a stopsign when entering the intersection, but you cross paths with at least three more streets before you are out of it. Not all of them have stopsigns. It's a mess.

The one at the top of my street in San Diego. These morons always park their big ass trailer thing on the corner so I can't see the on coming traffic.

Kelly Square. Two interstate off ramps, two interstate on ramps. Two major roads meeting and four lesser roads meeting. All in one place. If you know Worcester, you just shuddered. ***Seems like an awful lot of people in/near Worcester like to make comment.

Kelly Square, Worcester. Completely awful group of like 5 roads all merging together. There are other intersections that are just hard to get across, because traffic is so constant, so often I'll go in the "easy but wrong" direction so I can turn around somewhere and only have to cross one lane instead of two.

My Boston pet peeve is that left turn to get out to Logan. Most people wait in line, but there are always twerps that zip along to the front of the line and then try to cut in!! It's one of the few times I get furious when driving. I'll always take their license plate numbers, but what should I do with them??

*** I'm not surprised about Kelly Square: it was voted the worst intersection in Massachusetts.

Fresh Pond traffic circles.
**Romkey - It's ALWAYS better in a Miata :)

bleh

The intersection of Templeton Parkway and Arlington, Marion, Grove, and Belmont streets (a six points), on the border of Watertown and Belmont, when approached from Templeton Parkway. Templeton has the green at the same time that traffic from 10:00 to 4:00 has the green, making anything but a turn to 8:00 extremely dangerous. I commute through this intersection daily by rollerblades, which is much safer because I can run the light.

Timmi: while the Fresh Pond Rotaries of Death (particularly the Inner Rotary of Death) are unnerving, they're not so dangerous that I won't go through them on a bicycle.

In a car.

back roads in Cincinnati, where I'm from... they run along the river... The sky is black from the huge factories that continually pump out fumes into the air and crap into the river. Some of the factories must be a mile or more long... At night, the only light comes from these factories. The area gives me the total creeps... Since it's located in the middle of nowhere, there is a lot of wildlife in the area, breathing those fumes, drinking from that river...

Any highway in New Jersey.

I wouldn't say I have a least favorite place to drive, but rather a season. I hate winter driving.

As a cyclist rather than a driver I would say that the worst place to cycle are the junctions in Central London. In particular Hyde Park Corner, Trafalgar Square and the Bullring roundabout outside Waterloo Station. I would add that trying to cross Park Lane is also bad.

The reason is simply that the traffic at each of these is usually too fast and cuts across lots of lanes. They also require me to cycle across the lanes of traffic (like at each exit of the roundabout). Latterly I have got the hang of Trafalgar Square OK but I prefer to avoid Waterloo as much as possible.

The stretch of Interstate 5 in Washington between Mount Vernon and Bellingham...bump bump bump bump bump
bump bump bump

Interstate 93 in downtown Boston during rush hour, though one is not actually "driving" then, more like "sitting in traffic until rush hour is over and then driving." I find that ntersections like Kelly Square in Worcester, Kenmore Square in Boston, and the Fresh Pond rotaries in Cambridge are challenging and fun to drive through - I know now to leave at home any desire to actually get through those intersections alive or on time.

I forget things that are unpleasant in general; it seems I have forgotten my least favorite road to drive.

West Division Street. I had an accident there yesterday.

Well, we have a two lane highway that construction is being done on. 44 in Missouri. The morons made two narrow lanes with a cement barrier on each side for a mile. It is so dangerous, I don't know what they were thinking! It would better if I just ran into oncoming traffic, instead I'm in a tunnel of sorts & if I needed to suddenly stop there would be a 20 car pile up - on top of me!

I hate being on the freeway. Most of the other drivers drive as though they are maniacs.

Downtown.