As a Londoner who lives in Chicago and has been to Seattle a few times, I must say I really appreciate the driving culture in Seattle.

I currently live in Chicago. I absolutely love the city in many ways. It’s a amazing, beautiful international city. There are about 600,000 other immigrants who live in this city, including many Londoners so I feel a sense of community. That being said a near constant issue in Chicago is that drivers rarely stop for pedestrians and are very hostile in general.

I have had so many close calls in which I was going to use a zebra crossing (crosswalk) and drivers intentionally have sped up, honked at me, and even yelled/cussed at me to “get out of the fucking street”. Oftentimes the zebra crossing had a sign saying it is a state law to stop for pedestrians. I have even at times been in the middle of zebra crossings and have had drivers from both sides continue going, leaving me trapped in the middle of the street with about a foot of space on either side. Another time I was in the zebra crossing and a driver stopped for me and made eye contact with me, only to speed up as I began to step in front of their vehicle, and drove off laughing at me! Not to mention on Chicago highways it is relatively normal for traffic to be going 90-100MPH, with people flying all over the place with no turn signals, cutting traffic on the hard shoulder, and more.

Another thing that is very noticable in Chicago is that drivers often *intentionally* speed up on the highway to block you from merging. It happens all the time. If you put on your turn signal to merge, they rarely will let you in but instead will speed up and block you. I’ve had to drive onto the hard shoulder multiple times over this.

Anytime I have been to Seattle and driven there I have noticed that drivers are generally slower, much more courteous and much more cautious. As a pedestrian in Seattle, most times that I got close to a crosswalk, cars came to a full stop just to let me cross. Brilliant! In Chicago I have frequently seen times where cars will go to do a left turn on green, and pedestrians will be crossing and the cars will all start to lay on their horns at the pedestrians trying to intimidate them so they speed up and get out of the way. In Seattle I didn’t hear anyone using their horn, people generally used their turn signal most of the time, and I just felt safer. I know everyone has different experiences and there is always people who have gotten quite unlucky that will comment. But the main thing is, I felt safer in Seattle as a driver and a pedestrian. So thank you.