My Personal Top (Worst) Five Places to Drive

This list is only from my personal experience of driving, so that's why places like Boston or Shanghai aren't on there.

1. Washington, DC: First, you've got the diagonally running streets that just create more confusion than anything. Using a simple grid works for everywhere else. Second, you've got tons of tourists who are looking out the window at monuments instead of where they are going. Also, they aren't familiar with the roads anyway, so they do crazy things like make last minute turns with no warning. (DC is the absolute worst place I've ever driven.)

2. Atlanta, GA: Not so much downtown Atlanta, but just everywhere around it, including the beltway. There's just too many people and too many vehicles for the amount of surface roads. Even on a good day, during rush hour the the traffic flows like maple syrup running uphill in a blizzard. (That's slow.) Toss any inclement weather into the mix, and it might as well be a zombie apocalypse.

3. Columbia, SC: I don't know what it is about Columbia, but everyone here runs the hell out of red lights to an extent I don't see anywhere else. The light will be solid red for two solid counts of One Mississippi, two Mississippi, and then someone will just cruise on through. It's insane. Driving in Columbia is just flat-out dangerous.

4. I-81, between Wytheville, VA and Lexington VA: This is a main trucking route on the interior of the east coast, and I had to drive it all the time between Columbia and Lexington to get to and from college at W&L. The problem is that the area is very hilly/mountainous, and the big trucks that use this route are constantly going slow up the hills and going super-fast down them, which makes traffic kind of like an accordion. It also leads to lots of bad accidents between large trucks and cars, which don't work out so well for the cars. Aside from this, it's actually a beautifully scenic stretch of road.

5. Houston, TX: See Atlanta, but add in even worse humidity and more people with no drivers license. I love Texas, but Houston is just the pits.