Drive a Small Car in New York City
If you must drive into New York, you might consider driving an older, smaller car, a car you don’t mind if it gets dinged up. It’s highly recommended to never drive a new car into New York, it will only end up looking beat-up by the time you drive out of the city. It’s also recommended to install a GPS unit or get directions from Google map, but the ability to read and interpret street signs is critical as in an accurate clock to tell you the proper time of day. The reason for this is because many traffic rules are based on what time of day an event is happening, such as parking, turns and lane usage.
Manhattan is a very dynamic place and it’s always changing its driving environments, like first time visitors to New York leaving their Wall Street hotels who seem to have the inability to get their cars up to Manhattan street speed in their big gas guzzling SUVs, because they are too busy looking at everything or a solid traffic jam , where cars are sitting at a standstill for sometimes over 45 minutes. With New York City’s infamous traffic jams, it makes no sense to drive a huge gas wasting car wasting.
At some point, you’ll have to leave the car in a garage, on that aspect, having a smaller car is better. Avoid driving a stick shift, because when you are driving about, you’ll need to have your head on a swivel all the time and you’ll need to drive with one hand somewhere between 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock on the steering wheel, which allows you to make quick lateral movements, a very necessary skill when all of the other cars want into your lane and your spot.
After reading the information given above and you are still intent on driving into New York, drive something you are comfortable with, but it still should be a reliable, beat-up car with good pick-up and handling. The comfort part is because you’ll be sitting in traffic for long periods of time.
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