Tribalism at its finest.
In the Poconos, where I live, there's a fun little thing I've learned about state pride in Pennsylvania. Apparently, because PA does not require license plates to be on the front of the car, everyone from out of state is a "front plater". This is an othering statement of a condescending nature. Damn front platers being front platers again. If you've got a license plate on the front of your car you are not welcome here. Just kidding you totally are... this is a tourist destination after all. However, cars that are out of state are simply not trusted on the road as much, and when someone drives like an idiot this playful slur is often used.
Example:
A few months back my girlfriend saw a social media post about this gay guy from New York who was in the Poconos and admittedly made an uncouth maneuver on the road. Someone rolled down their window, shook their fist, and yelled, "Get out of the Poconos, ya dirty front plater!"
And so this guy from New York, having never heard this slur before, went online to ask if it was somehow some kind of slur against gay people that he had somehow never heard of before. Of course people are in the comments chuckling about it explaining that it just means you have a license plate on the front of your car. Classic example of when trying to play the victim fails. He basically told on himself because everyone knew he must have done something stupid on the road to warrant such a response, then he had to admit that's exactly what happened.
Are drivers in Pennsylvania actually better?
This is my personal experience, yes, and it's not even a question. Pennsylvania drivers are objectively better drivers on average. I've lived in California and Oregon before heading to the East Coast, and I can testify first hand that the average person is just a complete idiot on the road with zero self awareness and infinite self-importance. That statement applies to pretty much every place I've traveled to as well. I'm not a well traveled person so I'm sure there's some random country that puts PA drivers to shame but thus far I'm not aware of such a place.
Population matters
My theory has always been that people go insane in higher population locations. Humans were never meant to be crammed into cities like sardines, but that's exactly what happened due to convenient logistics. Hopefully one day we can decentralize the population in addition to the money.
That being said PA only has a total population of 13M peeps. I lived half an hour away from San Jose in California... and that city alone has a population of 1M. Los Angeles has a population of 4M. Once you get into these areas people turn into absolute lunatics on the road. Los Angeles has potentially the worst and most aggressive drivers in the world. I've talked to many people who are literally afraid to drive a car there because of how it is.
Closer to home:
I live on the border of both New York and New Jersey. I can be in New Jersey within 30 minutes and I could be in New York City is less than 2 hours. Both are wildly overpopulated.
New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the U.S., with approximately 1,291 to 1,292 people per square mile as of 2024 estimates
I never thought I see crazier drivers than the ones in LA, but hot damn NJ drivers are in an entirely different league. I remember one time in high school my next door neighbors had a niece from New Jersey who was in town visiting randomly... and she was TERRIFIED of crossing the street. None of us understood what she was on about, but she was the most careful person ever when walking across a road. This was like serious business. Now that I've seen NJ license plates and have been to their fair state, I now understand.
The silver lining
I will say one nice thing about New Jersey drivers: they are probably the best drivers in the world on a technical level. Amazing perception and situational awareness. Unfortunately they use their superpowers for evil and cannot be trusted.
This one time I was in the passenger seat of someone's car who shall remain nameless because they drive like a grandma and I'd rather not call them out directly. In any case we're in New Jersey and this guy stops in front of us and turns on his blinker... he wants to parallel park right next to us... but there simply is not enough room and we can't back up because there's a car behind us.
This guy did not care; zero-fucks-mode activated. With like 1 inch of clearance on each side of his car (our car and a car already parked) he proceeds to perfectly thread the needle and park his car in the spot while also maintaining eye contact with us as if to say, "Yeah this is so easy I don't even have to look at what I'm doing." It was the craziest thing I've ever see someone do with such deadpan [seemingly deserved] confidence.
Shortly after this we were running out of gas and needed to fill up but our nameless driver was afraid to even get out of the car because it was not a great part of town. I will admit it was a bit sketchy. Luckily I had the wherewithal to inform her that you aren't actually allowed to pump your own gas in NJ (same in Oregon). Everything is legally full service to "create jobs", but that's another topic entirely.
New York divers
While NJ drivers are complete psycho lunatics, NY drivers are more the classic assholes that I was used to in southern California. Constantly self serving. Following too closely. Never using a blinker. Cutting people off. Etc etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. It's also a mixed bag because almost half of the population of New York lives in the city at an astounding 9M 'souls'. Anything outside the city is pretty chill, but a lot of tourists in the Poconos are obviously direct from the city because of the short distance, so we get a lot of rich entitled pretentious city-folk fart sniffers.
Police enforcement.
Police in the Poconos are awesome because they do not mess with the locals ever. I have never been pulled over here or even had a cop behind me. All the backroads that locals use and are constantly speeding on? You'll never see a cop trying to hand out a ticket. Rather, due to the nature of the tourist trap it's always the front platers doing stupid stuff and getting a ticket for it. Not that I really have any respect for police but it's nice they ignore me here.
The best is when you see some idiot piling up snow on the top of his car to take it back home with them. Yeah that's super dangerous if you stop too fast it will all fall on the windshield and completely blind you. Don't do it, dummy.
PA drivers
Some things that set apart the average PA drivers from the rest is that they just do basic considerate things like, I don't know, use their blinker when they turn or change lanes. Well over more than half of the people in California do not ever use their blinker. In fact using it can be dangerous because some idiot will speed up just to try and stop you from changing lanes. This is why we can't have nice things.
The main thing that PA drivers do around here that sets them apart is flashing high beams to signal to an uncontrolled left that it's safe to turn in front of them. In more populous states this is often something only big rigs will do for each other. Speaking of big rigs, people actually stay well out of range of their wide turns and allow them to maneuver freely without having to stress out. Have you ever driven in one of those things? It's pretty gnarly driving ten feet off the ground not even being able to see the road you're driving on.
Several times I've also participated in a trend here where you drive in between two lanes to stop people from cutting in line on a merge. Again those behaviors are not very common in higher pop areas where it can lead to road rage and entitled pouting.
Weird tragedy of the commons flavor
The 'funny' thing about people driving better in low populated areas is that high populated areas is exactly when competent driving would really help the situation. Traffic and impatience leads people to perform more selfish acts that ironically makes the situation exponentially worse. It's honestly somewhat of a weird downward spiral flywheel that should be studied in a psychology class.
Conclusion
Never trust a front plater. Every time I pick someone up from the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey I warn them that they are about to see someone do something absolutely batshit crazy on the road. And we are never disappointed.