Economy
This Is the Country Where It Is Most Stressful to Learn to Drive
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In most states, people can get a driver’s permit when they turn 16 and a driver’s license several months later. On the way to obtaining a permit, people need education about how a car operates and the basics of the rules of the road.
Some public high schools have courses in driver’s education. People also can pay to learn how to drive at a “driving school.” Once that process is over, states generally require both a written test and a road test. According to CBS, about 40% of people fail tests the first time they take them.
Based on accident rates, driver’s education has a limited benefit. A study by AAA reports that drivers under 17 have the most accidents per 100 million miles driven. That is followed by drivers ages 18 and 19.
According to a new study by online driver’s education resource Zutobi, the amount of stress that people experience when they learn how to drive varies considerably from country to country. For the Most Stressful Country to Be a Learner Driver study, researchers assumed that learning how to drive can be stressful. The primary question driving the study’s results was, “But where do learner drivers have things the toughest?”
The data used to determine the country where it is toughest to become a driver included traffic congestion from TomTom, road traffic deaths from the World Bank and the number of registered vehicles per 100,000 people and road quality from the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.
On a scale of 1 to 10, the lower the number, the harder it is for people learning how to drive.
The country where learning to drive is most stressful is Romania, with a score of 5.87. This is primarily because of poor highway infrastructure and traffic congestion. Its traffic deaths figures were also relatively high.
These are the 20 countries where it is most stressful to learn how to drive:
| Country | Overall Score | Deaths per 100K |
|---|---|---|
| Romania | 4.87 | 10 |
| Malaysia | 5.07 | 23 |
| Philippines | 5.30 | 12 |
| Bulgaria | 5.35 | 9 |
| Russia | 5.35 | 12 |
| Greece | 5.52 | 8 |
| Poland | 5.65 | 9 |
| Argentina | 5.76 | 14 |
| New Zealand | 5.97 | 10 |
| Italy | 6.09 | 5 |
| Mexico | 6.14 | 13 |
| Czech Republic | 6.21 | 6 |
| Saudi Arabia | 6.27 | 36 |
| Latvia | 6.40 | 8 |
| Hungary | 6.42 | 8 |
| Slovakia | 6.47 | 6 |
| Estonia | 6.48 | 5 |
| Ireland | 6.52 | 3 |
| Iceland | 6.52 | 2 |
| United States | 6.62 | 13 |
Click here to see which state has the worst highways in America.
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