IBM has been studying stresses on American motorists, and has released a report claiming stress among Boston drivers is up dramatically this year - enough to push us from the second least stressed out major driving city in 2008 to the fourth most stressed group of drivers in the country (in your face, New York, we're more stressed out than you). Only LA, Washington and Miami drivers experience more agita on the daily commute, based on a survey of 4,440 drivers in ten major US cities, IBM says.
Some 47% of Boston drivers reported being stressed out on their commutes, up 10 percentage points from last year. According to IBM, Boston drivers rated the following as the worst roads for commuting: I-93, Routes 95, 128 and 495, "downtown."
And why is IBM studying drivers that aren't installed on PCs (ba-dum-DUM)? It sells "smart commuting" systems governments can use to try to get traffic to flow better.