Economy

The American City With the Worst Drivers

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Driving accidents kill well over 40,000 people each year. This is despite at least a half-dozen new safety features that have been put into cars in the past half-decade. (These are the cities in each state with the worst traffic.)
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Deaths, however, are not the only metric of good driving. At least that is not the position Clever Move takes in its “Cities With the Worst Drivers 2023.” The report looked at several yardsticks. Among them were average annual traffic fatalities per 100,000 residents from 2014 to 2020, average annual alcohol-related traffic fatalities per 100,000 residents from 2014 to 2020, days of precipitation per year on average, annual vehicle insurance premiums in the state, percentage of uninsured drivers in the state, Allstate’s best-drivers rank, Google Trends for “DUI” and auto repair shops per 100,000 residents.

This data caused the study’s authors to write, “Bad drivers exist everywhere, but in some cities, they’re decidedly worse because of an aggressive driving culture, poor road design, increasing congestion, and long commutes that shorten tempers and cause motorists to make poor decisions.”


When the figures for the rankings were taken together, Jacksonville was the worst city for drivers, followed by Louisville, Orlando and Tampa. Interestingly, many large Florida cities were among the worst. These were also among the fastest-growing counties in America.


The researchers commented about Jacksonville’s problems, “Interstate 95, which runs through the metro area, is considered one of the deadliest interstates in the country, and unfortunately, the city records 10.9 annual traffic-related fatalities per 100,000 residents — 65% more than the studied city average (6.6).” One has to wonder why this part of the interstate has not been rebuilt.

The top five cities for drivers were all large cities in California: San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego.

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