California Has The Worst Drivers In America

Mod: I kindly thought we'd take a break today from Trump and that perpetually at risk  Library to discuss something that we deal with on an every day basis. That is driving your car. According to this survey from the insurance website QuoteWizard.com, California has the worst drivers in United States. Somehow I find that not so difficult to believe. Certainly we have the most of them. That probably contributes as well. Here's the dirty lowdown.

Best and Worst Drivers by State 2017 (QuoteWizard.comlink): If you feel like you're constantly surrounded by subpar drivers, you might be onto something. Car-related deaths have risen a staggering 14 percent since 2015. A report from the III shows that car accidents rates are going up, and so too is the average cost of a car accident.

What's behind these disturbing trends? Two major factors:

1)More mileage: Thanks in part to a strong economy, Americans are driving more than ever before. More time spent on the road equals more car accidents.

2)Distracted driving: It seems that drivers can't help but text and tweet while behind the wheel. An estimated 660,000 people per day use an electronic device while driving, and nearly 3,500 people died due to distracted driving in 2015.

The stats are clear: America's got a driving problem. But America is a big country. We wanted to know how each state stacks up against each other. Who's worst, who's best, and who's average when it comes to driving? Find out below.

Rankings

Based on the methodology detailed at the end of this study, we ranked states from worst to best. In other words, the first ranked state has the worst drivers, and the 50th ranked state has the best drivers. To simplify it, we've added a color code to the rankings and map. States with bad drivers are marked with darker shades of blue, while states with good drivers are marked with lighter shades of green:


The Worst

California: The dubious honor of having the worst drivers in the country goes to California. After jumping from second in our 2016 rankings, California is now firmly the worst. That's not surprising when you consider that, according to our recent study of the best and worst drivers in the US by city, five of the top 10 cities with the worst drivers are located in California. That includes the worst driving city in America – Sacramento. California's less-than-stellar drivers are somewhat notorious – especially in gridlocked Los Angeles. An increase in citations and DUIs helped drive the state to the number one spot in terms of bad drivers. In fact, California also set the worst standard in the US for DUIs on our rankings. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, California. Hopefully your assortment of beautiful beaches and national parks will be enough to provide some comfort from those dangerous roadways.

Study Methodology

We sampled incident data (with more than two million data points) from the users of our website and juxtaposed it to Federal Highway Administration fatality data. To quantify overall driver standards for comparison, we weighted various incident totals for each state with its occurrence percentage. The rankings are a sum of weighted means calculated from these incidents:

Accidents
Speeding tickets
DUIs
Citations
Fatalities

Mod: So not only are Californians the worst drivers, they're also drunks. Insult added to injury. Just to heap it on a bit, here is another article that reinforces all the bad news.

California Drivers Ranked The Worst in the United States in Annual Study (Times of San Diego.comlink): California drivers are the worst in the United States, thanks to gridlocked freeways, smartphone use and an increase in drunk driving, according to an annual study by an insurance marketplace. QuoteWizard, an online marketplace for auto insurance, said Thursday an overall increase in citations, distracted driving and DUIs helped push the Golden State to the number one spot in terms of bad drivers from second place in 2016.

“The dubious honor of having the worst drivers in the country goes to California,” the study concluded. “California’s less-than-stellar drivers are somewhat notorious — especially in gridlocked Los Angeles.”

In fact, five of the top 10 cities with the worst drivers are located in California. Those cities include Sacramento— ranked the worst nationwide — Riverside, San Diego, Los Angeles and Bakersfield.

Following California in the worst-driver rankings were Minnesota, Utah, South Carolina and Washington. The state with the best drivers was Rhode Island.

“If you’ve ever been cut off by someone with an out-of-state plate and thought, ‘Oh, it figures,’ this study may be for you,” said Adam Johnson of QuoteWizard. “QuoteWizard analyzed millions of data points on drivers from throughout the U.S. and what we found provides a pretty interesting and sometimes surprising snapshot of the best and worst drivers in America.”

The company sampled data on accidents, fatalities, DUIs, speeding tickets and citations, collecting more than 2 million data points from drivers.

Mod: Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go commute to work. 

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