Is scapegoating “Maryland drivers” racist?

“Maryland drivers are the worst!” I admit, I've said it many times.

It's a common joke heard around DC and on Twitter. At first scan, this joke might seem like the same regional scapegoating that happens everywhere (“Massachusetts drivers are the worst!,” “California drivers are the worst!,” and so on). But when WAMU reporter Martin Austermuhle repeated this old saw recently, a listener reached out to him via email with a thought-provoking question: in our region, does this joke carry racist undertones?

But first…are Maryland drivers the worst?

I downloaded a dataset of crashes in DC that, thanks to Vision Zero advocates, the District recently made available to the public. Of 417,624 crashes in the database (covering roughly 2008 - June 2017), a plurality involved drivers whose cars had DC plates (39.3%). Maryland was right behind DC, with almost a third of the crashes that happened in the District involving a car with Maryland plates.

When I asked the GGWash listserv their thoughts, several contributors noted that they had never heard a similar stereotype about Virginia drivers (they must not be on Twitter, because…you guessed it…they're the worst)— and these data are consistent with that experience. Drivers with Maryland plates crashed in DC at twice the volume of those with Virginia ones during the time period covered by the dataset.

But still, more DC drivers crash in the District than Maryland ones.

Can we even conclude from this that Maryland drivers are worse than Virginia drivers? All Virginia drivers access the District via bridge crossings of the Potomac River, which funnel them onto a few specific arterial roads.

The District's border with Maryland, on the other hand, is far more porous, which may simply mean that there are far more Maryland cars in the District on a daily basis. Without knowing overall exposure, we have no basis to conclude if crash rates are differ by jurisdiction of registration — we only have crash volumes. This leaves open the possibility that there may be some basis for the stereotype.

A few years ago I moved from DC to Prince George's County and my car insurance rates went up. I thought for sure this was actuarial proof that Maryland drivers are worse. However, according to a recent ProPublica-funded investigation with Consumer Reports, it's actually just proof that institutional racism is alive and well: the analysis found that “insurers such as Allstate, Geico and Liberty Mutual were charging premiums that were on average 30 percent higher in zip codes where most residents are minorities than in whiter neighborhoods with similar accident costs.”

When it's DC vs. MD, is it urban vs. suburban?

The “Maryland driver” trope differs from all other “My state's drivers are the worst!”-isms in that those who use it are complaining about the drivers of a neighboring jurisdiction rather than their own. This creates an “us vs. them” dichotomy that doesn't exist when a driver on the Pacific Coast Highway or a pedestrian in Oakland exclaims, “California drivers are the worst!”

Is this because there's a real difference between DC residents and their Maryland neighbors?

According to the 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) estimates, 37.4% of District residents of working age use public transportation as their primary means of getting to work. In Montgomery County, only 15.8% do, and in Prince George's County it's 17.2%. While the transit mode share of Maryland workers who are specifically commuting to the District may likely differ, these data are consistent with the hypothesis that our region's Maryland residents drive more than the people who live in the District.

Perhaps the origin of the “Maryland drivers” stereotype lies in the fact that the average District resident is simply less likely to identify as a driver? Or perhaps it is that District residents fundamentally need something different from the roads than Maryland drivers because they favor different modes?

Segregation complicates the question

Our region is extremely racially segregated. What was previously a stark east-west divide has now been wrinkled by an influx of new white residents to the District, especially on the eastern side. The reader who wrote to Martin Austermuhle may be particularly sensitive to this change, as a newer white resident of Prince George's County, on the eastern border of DC.

As DC becomes whiter, is the old “urban vs. suburban” becoming a code for whites vs. “poor/immigrant/people of color”? Is it different when it's said in Ward 3, on the border with Montgomery County, versus Ward 5, on the border with Prince George's County?

According to the 2015 ACS, over 90% of Prince George's County residents are black and/or foreign-born. DC is 63%. Montgomery County is 50%. With the racial and economic divide in our region now at its starkest when framed as “Prince George's County vs. everyone else,” any derogatory reference framed within this kind of extreme spatial segregation is inexorably racist.

GGWash contributor Chris Slatt had a particularly thoughtful and empathetic response to this nuance:

I have often joked about 'Maryland drivers' and my initial reaction after seeing the tweet was “I am ABSOLUTELY talking about the BMW coming from Bethesda and Chevy Chase, as well as all the others” and I started to get cranky that someone was purporting to tell me what I meant when I joked about them. The thought that went through my head was “I'm not going to stop using a phrase just because other people have…decided to take it to imply racism” and then it hit me that this is exactly how my friend must feel that I have argued with in the past about his love for the Confederate flag. I have tried to convince him that no matter what the flag stands for to him, for many folks it is a symbol of racism and he needs to be sensitive to that even if that isn't what he is trying to portray. For me to have had such a strong reaction to that sentiment over a joke helped me get a sense for how he must be reacting inside to the same notion, but in connection to a symbol that has personal, familial and cultural meaning for him.

Shade or not shade? My verdict: let's not say it

While Chris' analogy to the Confederate flag is a very extreme example, the bottom line is that economic and racial segregation are growing even more extreme in our region, isolating Prince George's County. We should all be aware of this fact.

For those who seek justice, equity, and inclusion — lovers of this region who want it to be greater — we are not serving our cause when we fall into an “us vs. them” dichotomy. And that applies to Montgomery County too. While Montgomery County is the whitest of the three jurisdictions, and anecdotally has BMW drivers, it is changing along with the rest of the region — it has been majority minority since 2010.

GGWash contributor Carolyn Gallaher lives at the nexus of all three jurisdictions:

I live in Silver Spring and work in DC…I probably spend as much time in DC as I do in MD. A lot of people travel all over the metro area, on a routine basis. I think of myself as a DMV resident, regardless of my license plate. When I see stuff like this (complaining especially about MD drivers), it sometimes feels a little like urban snobbery, which takes on racial and economic tones given the changes occurring in the metro area, whether intentional or not. Bragging about DC is fine (lots of improvements to boast about), but when it comes at the expense of surrounding counties, it starts to feel obnoxious.

Instead of joking about “Maryland drivers,” I take this conversation as a helpful reminder that the just way to improve road conditions for District residents is to also improve transit and bicycle access to the downtown for Maryland residents. We don't need this trope to make a point about road safety, regional dedicated funding for Metro, or any other topic. So I'm putting it behind me.