Are You a Bad Seattle Driver?

The video is only a minute and forty-eight seconds long. But car after car, 17 in total, careens into view from the I-5 South tunnel exit onto Union Street. Some crash into an ivy-covered retaining wall. Others bounce onto the sidewalk or spin out of control into the intersection. Amazingly, there are no collisions with bicyclists or pedestrians.

 

Seattle resident Michael Basconcillo set up the camera outside his downtown apartment building because he was tired of the screeching tires, the wrecks, the just plain bad driving. The resulting footage, posted at the end of November 2021, already has 4.7 million views.

Many people took Basconcillo’s video as yet another opportunity to bemoan our region’s bad driver stereotype. According to salty transplants and the online commentariat, Seattleites can’t drive in rain, snow, wind, or sunshine. (Honestly though, save your griping for the next snow response.)

 

But are we really that bad? What better way to answer that question than with a test, filled with rules pulled straight from the Washington State Driver Guide.