This state has the worst drivers in Australia

THEY don’t let you merge, drive up your backside, don’t know where their indicator is and drive slowly in the fast lane. This is where you’ll find Australia’s worst drivers, writes Susan Johnson.

RIGHT, I’m calling it: Queensland drivers are the worst in Australia.

In my exhaustive study based on driving in many states for more than thirty years, this jury of one has reached a verdict.

Queensland drivers are a tiny bit crap. I’ll give you the full list of their driving crimes later, but first, here are my credentials. I was born in Brisbane so technically I’m a Queenslander, except that my parents moved to Sydney when I was three months old, which is where I grew up.

I’m a product of a mixed marriage (my father was a Queenslander, my mother from Sydney). When he married “out”, his Queensland born-and-bred parents were alarmed, but when my mother agreed to move to Brisbane following their marriage things settled down for a while.

Then he got transferred to Sydney. Sydney! Can you imagine the traffic? Yes, my father could (two and a half hours a day travelling from western Sydney to the city till he changed jobs and moved to Sydney’s north shore where his new company was located).

You can always spot the state someone grew up in from their driving skills. (Pic: supplied)

Throughout his years in Sydney, dad hankered for Queensland. He spoke romantically about his childhood in Far North Queensland: “going toey” to school (no shoes), picking mangoes and eating them fresh off the tree.

Is it any wonder that when we three kids were teenagers he chucked in his corporate job to buy a pineapple farm? We were suddenly on a farm outside Nambour, where we grew pineapples and actual mangoes on actual trees and ate them.

But whenever we travelled down to Brisbane, you should have heard the Old Man. “Don’t you know how to bloody drive? Idiot! Worst bloody drivers in Australia!”

How could one single Queenslander turn so traitorous?

And then I learned to drive too: were Queensland drivers worse than everyone else? How could I tell — I’d only ever driven in Queensland.

Who knew that drivers in Sydney would actually let you in when merging! (Pic: supplied)

Then I moved back to Sydney. Drivers let you in when merging! They didn’t speed up, like they did back home, clearly thinking you were getting away with something if they let you in.

They didn’t sit in the far right lane — aka The Fast Lane — driving under the speed limit, going slower than the cars to their left.

They indicated! Drivers actually indicated when they were going to turn left or right! And when anyone was trying to park on a busy road, they waited patiently until the car was parked instead of honking their horn and shouting as if parking a car was illegal.

Later, I moved to Melbourne. Yikes, trams! But I learned from Melbourne drivers to courteously navigate around them, as well as how to that weird turning thing cars are supposed to do while waiting to turn left or right.

Don’t get me started on Queensland’s tailgating drivers. But, to me, their worst crime remains their inability to merge. Here’s a tip, Queensland: traffic moves faster if you think of merging like plaiting strands of hair: one in, then the next, one in, et cetera. You’re welcome.

Susan Johnson is a Courier-Mail columnist.