A Virtual Tournament of Annoying Driving Habits in New Jersey

Sure, the March Madness NCAA Basketball Tournament is exciting, but if you're really looking for some thrills, how about the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety's "March Driving Madness" tournament?

Over the past several weeks, New Jerseyans have been recommending and voting on a wide variety of annoying driving habits, and last week the "Elite Eight" habits that Garden State drivers name finally faced off. The match-ups included:

• Texting and driving vs. speeding;
• Directional use vs. "Move over" law;
• Left lane travel vs. headlight use;
• Tailgating vs. yielding.

"We asked people for suggestions on Facebook and Twitter to give us a pool of driver annoyance suggestions, and now we're down to the "Final Four" driving annoyances, and voting starts today, texting and driving will take on yielding, and then it's headlight use versus the Move Over law," said Zach Hosseini, a spokesman for the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety.

He said out it's no secret that "drivers in New Jersey have a lot of gripes about their fellow motorists and we thought this would be the perfect time to ask them really what those are."

To cast your vote, you can visit the Division's webpage at www.njsaferoads.com or visit the Division of Highway Traffic Safety Facebook page.

According to Hosseini, voters can also post comments about annoying driving habits.

"One woman said that she thought the worst one was texting and driving, she said she sees it especially near crossing guards and schools," he said.

The voting will take place over the next few weeks, and of course no one knows which category will come out on top.

"Texting and driving seems to be the...runaway winner just in the preliminary rounds and also in the voting, but hey, there were upsets in the last round, so what we may have thought were favorites in the preliminary round turned out not to be favorites," Hosseini said.

When asked whether Las Vegas has posted odds for this contest, he said probably not, because they're focused on the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.

Once the top vote-getting category is selected, he said "it will be the focus of a radio PSA that we plan to run in the spring and summer. The point of the driving annoyance tournament is to remind people what safe driving habit perhaps they're not participating in, so we're going to try to take from this and use it as an educational opportunity for the spring and summer on the radio."