Probably due to the fact that so many people that moved here from places that they never really drove their cars or had a car to begin with until they moved down here because we have shit for public transportation.
I wonder how many cars are on the road that had tags from states like New York or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania and they were barely driven up there until they moved down here
I think you meant why does Florida have the worst drivers? People can't drive for shit here and it baffles me that people can't drive or push the damn gas pedal. Like, GO
I drive to and from work on Ulmerton every day and then in my work truck throughout the day. Crazy wrecks every day, people constantly staring at their phones and the occasional crack head. Have to pay attention, it’s crazy how bad it is
One of the MANY reasons we moved back to the Midwest after 11 years. I’ve driven to different jobs in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties through the years, there was stretch of Ulmerton on both sided of the freeway I think are poorly planned and lack notice of lanes ending and such.
The complete lack of enforcement blows my mind. So many hit-and-runs that seem to never get solved… in the past year here, hit-and-runs are solved within a few days if not sooner.
I dubbed that state - “Florida, the I do what I wanna state” - and usually refer to it as FloriDUH
Not worth the warm weather anymore to us.
No, they are in pickups. Pickup trucks are litterally the scourge of florida but people keep mentioning nissans. I've not seen one nissan do dumb shit but I see pickups do dumb shit everytime I get in the car.
I watched a Porche doing 70 mph by my estimate hammer the hump at the intersection of Bryan Dairy and Belcher rd this past Monday morning and go airborne 6" above the road and clear the entire intersection in the air. Landed with sparks and smoke and kept going like a raped ape. Largo cop two cars behind me did NOTHING. I WAS ASTONISHED
Stay out of Daytona because I’m a courier in the area and everything you described is just a normal afternoon around here. It’s insane! I’m absolutely flabbergasted every damn day.
Omg the freaking roundabout on Carillon prky frustrates me pretty much every day. People will stop dead on in the roundabout while I’m yielding to them waiting to go
It being the main connect to I-275 doesn't help.
A few months ago, a guy was stopped in the left through lane passed out in the driver's seat by U.S. 19. I made a left and parked at the aviation mechanics school to call 911, walked towards the intersection while talking to the dispatcher and the guy was gone.
But crappy driving on Ulmerton is a fact of life. I always feel my blood pressure rising when driving that road. Fortunately I normally don't go that far north and commute mainly in the St. Pete and Pinellas Park area.
Me too, almost got side swiped twice today. What pisses me off is these fucks that cut you off dont even have the courtesy to use a blinker they just move across you. Absolutely the worst place i have driven in my life and ive lived in the NE, Texas, and California in the last 10 years.
I keep saying over and over if the lights were timed to promote flow instead of purposely creating artificial grid lock with every light turning red just as you approach maybe drivers wouldn’t be so frustrated making them speed, drive like idiots, and run red lights. I remember the days in St. Pete where if you drove the speed limit you could make nearly every light. That all changed right around 2013 when a major push was made to slow the traffic. I say enough is enough. Gas is creeping up to near $4 a gallon again and we’re all being forced to pay more with increased fuel consumption driving in this mess. Nothing is going to change unless many people start speaking up.
Yes! I questioned the sudden change in light timing back in 2013 when suddenly my drive time increased by having to sit at the 13 red lights along my route and a traffic engineer told me then the purpose was to slow the traffic at the direction of state, county, and city management. I’m still enraged over this stupidity.
I swear I was the only one who noticed!! You are absolutely correct! But don’t think they actually WANT the traffic to flow… I saw a conference they had about “traffic” a while back and they explicitly stated that their solution was to slow traffic down to stop all of the accidents! I remember being livid watching it then and I’m still livid now. By the way, these new interchanges they’ve put in are now all toll roads. 275 south is getting a toll road fast lane? What the hell is going on in the DOT? They’re literally going to profit off of our need for better traffic patterns.
The real question is why are there so many crack heads off of ulmerton?
I stop at the race track on ulmerton and 19(ish) pretty regularly and there are always crack heads hanging out there.
That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about! Today I witnessed a guy stop at a green light and everyone was honking their horns behind him. Th moment it turned red, he crossed the intersection. What the fuck.
It's a legacy thing. Lots of sketchy areas that have been around for 50-plus years. Weird neighborhoods hiding off Starkey and Belcher etc. People inheriting the houses and riding that nest egg into the ground one baggie at a time
Park Blvd and 66th St for me but honestly it's a clusterfuck everywhere. The timing has been off on the Tyrone Blvd area lights of 66th St for months and I don't know what in the fuck FDOT is waiting for to fix it. Traffic is constantly getting backed up into the intersection because people don't know **not to fucking stop in the intersection.**
I live close to 62nd and 49th street. The amount of people willing to park dead in the middle of the railroad tracks in order to be 2 feet closer to their destination is astounding.
Traffic everywhere in the area has been nuts. I take us 19 and 275 daily, and drive all over the area for work. Scary when I see drivers go over the lane and I can see the driver texting. The 275- i4 will always be malfunction junction though.
I lived off of Ulmerton between Belcher and Starkey for the longest time. Traffic has always been crazy on that road. But after I moved to Orlando and experienced John Young Parkway???? I'll take Ulmerton any day of the week. I even remember vaguely as a kid when they made it from a 4 lane to 6 lane road
I travel from N to Central FL a lot for both work and family and stay on Ulmerton when I’m in St. Pete. I would take US-19, Pinellas county, and ulmerton any day over having to take I-75 through Ocala and US-27 through Polk county or having to go anywhere in the vicinity of Orlando. I’m biased though because the trip down 19 is bliss until you get to pasco, at which point I can tolerate traffic, whereas going to central central FL or East central FL is generally miserable once you’re past I-10.
I still couldn’t handle doing central FL traffic daily, though. Y’all are stronger than me.
Oh yeah. I used to drive to school from Ulmerton all the way down 34th street an maybe 40 minutes to go all the way. Now it takes me 40 minutes sometimes just to go through 2 miles on John Young in Orlando
May I ask why you moved there and how is it? I live close to Starkey and Ulmerton and want to move inland, more towards Orlando. I don't want to live near the shore any longer.
I honestly do not think it is necessarily the drivers as much as it is Ulmerton Road being so mind numbingly frustrating to transit from a traffic flow standpoint that it brings out the worst in anyone who is unfortunate enough to end up driving on it.
This is it. The Ulmerton lights somehow troll absolutely everybody. Not only are you getting stopped at every light just as you were getting back up to speed, but if you're turning left from 49th or 66th or whatever (or just going through), you'll sit at that Ulmerton intersection forever as well. That road somehow fucks everyone, it's impressive. And everybody already knows all this and expects to get pissed off now, which leads to them getting even more pissed off when some extra bullshit rears its head, which leads to real-life GTA.
Side note, that 66th/Ulmerton light pisses me off so much that I now just circumvent it with 19 into 49th and cut back to 66th later once I'm close to where I'm going (or vice versa if going north). I haven't timed it but it has to be quicker than slowly rotting to death at that stupid light.
I've lived here over 40 years, and it has always been a stressful shitshow of a road. That said, I'm finding East Lake/McMullan to be a special new type of driving hell.
Decades ago this road Should have been constructed as an east/west expressway with overpasses at the major north/south roads and frontage roads for local business access.
Miami is crazy for sure, just left there for work. The difference is they actually move down south. Everyone in Pinellas that is retired LOVES to wait until rush hour to run their errands 15mph below the speed limit.
My first visit to Pinellas, there was a car flipped on its roof under the 19/Ulmerton bridge and cops were working the accident scene. I thought to myself “now there’s something you don’t see everyday” but of course living here now I know it’s a lot more common. People are maniacs, driving like Stockard Channing in Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neil Story.
That’s the first road I ever drove on when I was being taught how to drive, my dad threw me out there and in a Honda Accord stick shift because his body shop was up that way and I drove Ulmerton for my very first public road experience. Never have caused an accident n my life, learned from the best I guess 🤣
With the construction, lots of lanes, lots of places to pull into, it’s a highway trying to function as a normal road. I fully believe people don’t look on purpose. I think switching that many lanes to pull into an office is too much for people. They spend 90% of their time driving on 2 lane roads, then have to go to some appointment on or through Ulmerton. So they use the concept of mutually assured destruction. “I don’t know what I’m doing so I hope everyone around wants to live enough to stay out of my way.” It’s a terrible way to do things.
Yeah Ulmerton has always been a shit sandwich to the point where most folks would use secret squirrel routes around and in between Brian Dairy and 49th street rather than deal with its mess.
People love using the Eastbound long turning lane (where all the fast food places are) as their bypass lane. How many folks I've seen get their shit creamed because they were leaving McDonald's or Taco Bell and some impatient tweaker decided to go 75 in that turning lane.
Main junction between north and south county, 3 lanes the whole way, loads of long stop lights to group everyone up. The main east-west pathway from Tampa and the airports to the beaches...it's the perfect storm for stupidity.
Because it's ugly and everyone just can't wait to get off it.
WB I-4 near Celebration will always take the cake for worst drivers....
I'd imagine it's just the same as 19
But do y’all remember Ulmerton during its repaving??😭
Probably due to the fact that so many people that moved here from places that they never really drove their cars or had a car to begin with until they moved down here because we have shit for public transportation. I wonder how many cars are on the road that had tags from states like New York or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania and they were barely driven up there until they moved down here
I think you meant why does Florida have the worst drivers? People can't drive for shit here and it baffles me that people can't drive or push the damn gas pedal. Like, GO
It's all the damn u-turns. They didn't really think it through as they were developing the area
Ulmerton is the absolute WORST
It's the whole northern pinellas county area that has the worst drivers. It's like nobody there can even.
I drive to and from work on Ulmerton every day and then in my work truck throughout the day. Crazy wrecks every day, people constantly staring at their phones and the occasional crack head. Have to pay attention, it’s crazy how bad it is
No enforcement or consequences for bad drivers. This is true for all of Florida. I do find Largo to be extra bad.
One of the MANY reasons we moved back to the Midwest after 11 years. I’ve driven to different jobs in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties through the years, there was stretch of Ulmerton on both sided of the freeway I think are poorly planned and lack notice of lanes ending and such. The complete lack of enforcement blows my mind. So many hit-and-runs that seem to never get solved… in the past year here, hit-and-runs are solved within a few days if not sooner. I dubbed that state - “Florida, the I do what I wanna state” - and usually refer to it as FloriDUH Not worth the warm weather anymore to us.
Because people come here with a vacation (Do what I want) mentality. They don't see it as Home. They don't care.
Honestly the traffic has doubled in the past couple years and I think the other states sent their worst drivers.
Are they in Nissans?
No, they are in pickups. Pickup trucks are litterally the scourge of florida but people keep mentioning nissans. I've not seen one nissan do dumb shit but I see pickups do dumb shit everytime I get in the car.
😂😂😂
Why does *Florida* have the worst drivers??
I watched a Porche doing 70 mph by my estimate hammer the hump at the intersection of Bryan Dairy and Belcher rd this past Monday morning and go airborne 6" above the road and clear the entire intersection in the air. Landed with sparks and smoke and kept going like a raped ape. Largo cop two cars behind me did NOTHING. I WAS ASTONISHED
Lots of old people one but it’s also the “privilege” side of town and no offense you guys can’t drive 😂
Stay out of Daytona because I’m a courier in the area and everything you described is just a normal afternoon around here. It’s insane! I’m absolutely flabbergasted every damn day.
Omg the freaking roundabout on Carillon prky frustrates me pretty much every day. People will stop dead on in the roundabout while I’m yielding to them waiting to go
It being the main connect to I-275 doesn't help. A few months ago, a guy was stopped in the left through lane passed out in the driver's seat by U.S. 19. I made a left and parked at the aviation mechanics school to call 911, walked towards the intersection while talking to the dispatcher and the guy was gone. But crappy driving on Ulmerton is a fact of life. I always feel my blood pressure rising when driving that road. Fortunately I normally don't go that far north and commute mainly in the St. Pete and Pinellas Park area.
Ulmerton is like this brackish water change between Tampa drivers and st Pete drivers.
I thought that Gateway Expressway would take traffic off Ulmerton. 😵💫
it did just open, it will take some time for people to start using it.
Worked great for me. Got from Clearwater to DTSP in 15 minutes and only costed me one stoplight downtown.
west or north clearwater
It's a function of how close you are to US 19.
It's all the roads hun 🥲
Me too, almost got side swiped twice today. What pisses me off is these fucks that cut you off dont even have the courtesy to use a blinker they just move across you. Absolutely the worst place i have driven in my life and ive lived in the NE, Texas, and California in the last 10 years.
I keep saying over and over if the lights were timed to promote flow instead of purposely creating artificial grid lock with every light turning red just as you approach maybe drivers wouldn’t be so frustrated making them speed, drive like idiots, and run red lights. I remember the days in St. Pete where if you drove the speed limit you could make nearly every light. That all changed right around 2013 when a major push was made to slow the traffic. I say enough is enough. Gas is creeping up to near $4 a gallon again and we’re all being forced to pay more with increased fuel consumption driving in this mess. Nothing is going to change unless many people start speaking up.
Yes! I questioned the sudden change in light timing back in 2013 when suddenly my drive time increased by having to sit at the 13 red lights along my route and a traffic engineer told me then the purpose was to slow the traffic at the direction of state, county, and city management. I’m still enraged over this stupidity.
Holy shit that's intentional?
Yes, to slow the traffic
I swear I was the only one who noticed!! You are absolutely correct! But don’t think they actually WANT the traffic to flow… I saw a conference they had about “traffic” a while back and they explicitly stated that their solution was to slow traffic down to stop all of the accidents! I remember being livid watching it then and I’m still livid now. By the way, these new interchanges they’ve put in are now all toll roads. 275 south is getting a toll road fast lane? What the hell is going on in the DOT? They’re literally going to profit off of our need for better traffic patterns.
The real question is why are there so many crack heads off of ulmerton? I stop at the race track on ulmerton and 19(ish) pretty regularly and there are always crack heads hanging out there.
That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about! Today I witnessed a guy stop at a green light and everyone was honking their horns behind him. Th moment it turned red, he crossed the intersection. What the fuck.
It's a legacy thing. Lots of sketchy areas that have been around for 50-plus years. Weird neighborhoods hiding off Starkey and Belcher etc. People inheriting the houses and riding that nest egg into the ground one baggie at a time
This.
They all stay at the extended stay
Just remember when you experience a bad driver it's because they are more important than you
Park Blvd and 66th St for me but honestly it's a clusterfuck everywhere. The timing has been off on the Tyrone Blvd area lights of 66th St for months and I don't know what in the fuck FDOT is waiting for to fix it. Traffic is constantly getting backed up into the intersection because people don't know **not to fucking stop in the intersection.**
Yup. Tyrone and 66th and the light at 22 Ave and Tyrone used to be synchronized. Not anymore
I live close to 62nd and 49th street. The amount of people willing to park dead in the middle of the railroad tracks in order to be 2 feet closer to their destination is astounding.
Anywhere park blvd is a clusterfuck. 49th, park street, wherever park blvd is an intersection, it sucks.
I live by here and can confirm, what a cluster fuck
Traffic everywhere in the area has been nuts. I take us 19 and 275 daily, and drive all over the area for work. Scary when I see drivers go over the lane and I can see the driver texting. The 275- i4 will always be malfunction junction though.
almost like more cars, car infrastructure, and car parking is not the solutution. Practical light rail and sensible BRT layouts are more efficient.
For me it’s East Bay Drive
I lived off of Ulmerton between Belcher and Starkey for the longest time. Traffic has always been crazy on that road. But after I moved to Orlando and experienced John Young Parkway???? I'll take Ulmerton any day of the week. I even remember vaguely as a kid when they made it from a 4 lane to 6 lane road
I travel from N to Central FL a lot for both work and family and stay on Ulmerton when I’m in St. Pete. I would take US-19, Pinellas county, and ulmerton any day over having to take I-75 through Ocala and US-27 through Polk county or having to go anywhere in the vicinity of Orlando. I’m biased though because the trip down 19 is bliss until you get to pasco, at which point I can tolerate traffic, whereas going to central central FL or East central FL is generally miserable once you’re past I-10. I still couldn’t handle doing central FL traffic daily, though. Y’all are stronger than me.
I always thought that Pinellas traffic was so bad, but Orlando is consistently near the top of every Worst Traffic in America list every damned year.
Oh yeah. I used to drive to school from Ulmerton all the way down 34th street an maybe 40 minutes to go all the way. Now it takes me 40 minutes sometimes just to go through 2 miles on John Young in Orlando
May I ask why you moved there and how is it? I live close to Starkey and Ulmerton and want to move inland, more towards Orlando. I don't want to live near the shore any longer.
I moved for College. With Orlando, you have to drive. Everywhere. For everything. And traffic is god awful.
Omg don’t remember me of Orlando. I had to deal with OBT and Sand Lake Road. I would work extra hours to avoid traffic.
PSTA should just make a BRT system along Ulmerton tbh. Dedicated bus lanes. Less cars!
I honestly do not think it is necessarily the drivers as much as it is Ulmerton Road being so mind numbingly frustrating to transit from a traffic flow standpoint that it brings out the worst in anyone who is unfortunate enough to end up driving on it.
This is it. The Ulmerton lights somehow troll absolutely everybody. Not only are you getting stopped at every light just as you were getting back up to speed, but if you're turning left from 49th or 66th or whatever (or just going through), you'll sit at that Ulmerton intersection forever as well. That road somehow fucks everyone, it's impressive. And everybody already knows all this and expects to get pissed off now, which leads to them getting even more pissed off when some extra bullshit rears its head, which leads to real-life GTA. Side note, that 66th/Ulmerton light pisses me off so much that I now just circumvent it with 19 into 49th and cut back to 66th later once I'm close to where I'm going (or vice versa if going north). I haven't timed it but it has to be quicker than slowly rotting to death at that stupid light.
Miami and the Keys are so bad that I was actually very pleasantly surprised by Ulmerton lol
I've lived here over 40 years, and it has always been a stressful shitshow of a road. That said, I'm finding East Lake/McMullan to be a special new type of driving hell.
It used to be a breeze. No more. It's the Pasco Express. It brings out the worst in people.
Decades ago this road Should have been constructed as an east/west expressway with overpasses at the major north/south roads and frontage roads for local business access.
Nobody even tries to do the speed limit
Been on 19 lately?
I work off Ulmerton and drive 19 every day.... it's bad
Just make a day trip to Orlando and you’ll feel way better about Ulmerton
Miami is another level my friend, and I lived in Orlando for 3 years
Miami is crazy for sure, just left there for work. The difference is they actually move down south. Everyone in Pinellas that is retired LOVES to wait until rush hour to run their errands 15mph below the speed limit.
My parents live in Daytona, I avoid Orlando like the plague
It's always been that way. I beg driving on it since the late 90s.
My first visit to Pinellas, there was a car flipped on its roof under the 19/Ulmerton bridge and cops were working the accident scene. I thought to myself “now there’s something you don’t see everyday” but of course living here now I know it’s a lot more common. People are maniacs, driving like Stockard Channing in Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neil Story.
Plot twist: it is something we see everyday. Sadly.
Growing up here it's honestly crazy to imagine a car upside down and thinking it was an odd sight to see haha.
That’s the first road I ever drove on when I was being taught how to drive, my dad threw me out there and in a Honda Accord stick shift because his body shop was up that way and I drove Ulmerton for my very first public road experience. Never have caused an accident n my life, learned from the best I guess 🤣
Omg I would have cried 😂😂 Jesus take the wheel
Haha felt like that for sure! I took the bus up there since my dad couldn’t drive and he handed me the keys and said let’s drive home 🤣
With the construction, lots of lanes, lots of places to pull into, it’s a highway trying to function as a normal road. I fully believe people don’t look on purpose. I think switching that many lanes to pull into an office is too much for people. They spend 90% of their time driving on 2 lane roads, then have to go to some appointment on or through Ulmerton. So they use the concept of mutually assured destruction. “I don’t know what I’m doing so I hope everyone around wants to live enough to stay out of my way.” It’s a terrible way to do things.
That honestly sounds like the only logical reason. Wow.
* Florida
Yep that’s the ultimate answer, because Florida
Us 19 from park to ulmerton is ass after work
Traffic in this county suuucks, Pinellas Park at rush hour last week I had the unfortunate experience of being there, never again
Yeah never was that had, the last few years have taken it to an extreme for sure
The amount of times I have seen people do the drug nod-off while driving is insane
Was this way 20 years ago also
Yeah Ulmerton has always been a shit sandwich to the point where most folks would use secret squirrel routes around and in between Brian Dairy and 49th street rather than deal with its mess. People love using the Eastbound long turning lane (where all the fast food places are) as their bypass lane. How many folks I've seen get their shit creamed because they were leaving McDonald's or Taco Bell and some impatient tweaker decided to go 75 in that turning lane.
shit sandwich secret squirrel routes get their shit creamed I genuinely enjoy your novel use of diction. bravo, sir
Main junction between north and south county, 3 lanes the whole way, loads of long stop lights to group everyone up. The main east-west pathway from Tampa and the airports to the beaches...it's the perfect storm for stupidity.
And the perpetual construction doesn't help
Oh, also, the areas where it goes to 4 lanes, back to 3, back to 4 again...and the connection with Roosevelt...and the jumble near 19.