My Dad owned and drove his own taxicab from 1952 to 1956. The first month I was in graduate school in 1973 Mom and Dad came to visit. It wasn’t long before Dad figured out how bad Boston drivers can be. “If I lived here, I’d get an old car and boy, would I have fun!”

            Something he did not realize was how unique “traffic” laws were in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For example, in an intersection without a traffic signal, the right of way has nothing to do with the person to the right of you. The FIRST person who gets to the intersection has the right of way AND the next two people behind THEM as well! My favorite in the entire city was Medford Square near Tufts University. FIVE roads coming into the same intersection with no signal!

I had an old Mercedes, a 1959 220S my dad gave me. It needed repairs I could not afford. Dad had a friend with his own small car rental company in Miami. I got a big ugly tan Ford Wagon from him. By the time Janis and I sold it as we were leaving Boston, all four corners of the car had been smashed in by accident.  I guess my “favorite” was coming off Soldiers Field Road onto Commonwealth Avenue when I was in graduate school at Boston University. We made the right turn into the exit and stopped at the stop sign. Some guy came flying off the road behind us, smashed into the rear of our car, shifted into reverse and went around us, not stopping at the stop sign.

            But NOTHING tells the story of Boston drivers like a press conference that the state Secretary of Transportation under Dukakis gave one time.

He recounted that he had just been to Chicago on a business trip. In a large intersection a white-gloved traffic officer waved him over about his driving. His comment, “Where are you from? Boston?” The secretary then went on to say that they decided to bailout of the multimillion-dollar computerized traffic flow managing signal system years in the making for downtown Boston. Why?

“None of you will obey the signals anyways, so why waste the money!” 🙂