That approach won’t work at all once you get West of the Mormon Temple ~ and in Virginia it’s just so wrong.......... we have a saying when we see somebody doing something totally bizarre ‘look, he has a Maryland plate’ ~
I love that section of the beltway, all twisty and turny, it’s like real driving; so long as there aren’t a lot of idiots on the road drifting out of their lanes all the time.
As for bizarre driving, I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ll say the strangest drivers I’ve seen were in florida. I can’t tell you how many times in my brief trips there I’ve seen people make right turns or left turns across 3 lanes of traffic. It’s like they are oblivious to the world, drive in any lane they want, and then when they reach their turn, they just wing it.
I happen to like Virginia drivers more than Maryland (I grew up in Maryland, and live in Virginia now). But I do tend to avoid the rush-hour nightmare that is DC and it’s outskirts. I hate mindless traffic jambs.
And of course, more and more of Virginia is just like that; I-95 south to Richmond is nearly impassable until exit 143 for several important hours every day. (I drive south a lot — in the fall, I have to drive down every friday for a job at Kings Dominion, and now my daughter is at VCU so we drive there a lot as well).