New Report Names Louisiana Drivers Worst in The Nation

A new research report by CarInsuranceComparison.com has ranked all fifty states on statistics including drunk driving, failure to obey signals, fatalities, and traffic tickets, and it's not good news for Louisiana, which the report found to have the worst drivers in the nation. But Louisiana drivers have plenty of company, with drivers from states like Florida, Missouri, and Nevada accompanying them in the bottom ten.

Part of a long tradition of in-depth looks at driving statistics and fatalities, the report gathered information from the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration, the National Motorist's Association, and Governor's Highway Safety Administration on five key metrics: fatalities per million miles driven, number of moving violation tickets issued, drunken driving citations and convictions, number of tickets issued for failure to obey traffic signals, and ranking on careless driving. Each state was ranked on each criteria, with 1 being the best and 50 being the worst. Then each state had its rankings added to give it an overall score.

The rankings speak for themselves: Rhode Island is the safest state in the United States, despite being only 28 in drunken driving, and is joined by Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Hampshire in the top five, while the Bayou State is joined by Missouri, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma in the bottom five.

Among the surprising findings:

- New England has an unjust reputation as a bad place to drive: the Northeast ranked highly in the survey with five out of the top ten states, followed closely by the Northwest and Midwest.

- Performing badly in one or two categories didn't mean a state made the worst of the list. For example, Wyoming, the worst state for drunk driving and one of the top ten worst for fatalities, still came in number sixteen overall.

- By contrast, the ten worst states often ranked in the bottom ten in most or all categories. Arizona, the sixth worst state according to the study, was in the bottom twenty in every category but one: carelessness, where it just skirts the bottom twenty at number 29.

The results are surprising in some respects, and corroborated the findings of others. GMAC's recent survey of drivers, which asked 50,000 drivers to retake a written driver's ed exam, found that the highest failure rates were in the Southeast, which was consistent with CIC's survey: for example, only one state in the Southeast managed to stay out of the bottom twenty-five, and the Southwest didn't do much better.

The survey draws one definitive conclusion: no matter where a given state falls on the list, there’s still room for improvement. Take Illinois, in the top ten overall, but in the bottom twenty for speeding tickets -- or Nebraska, also in the top ten, but the third worst when it comes to obeying traffic signals. In short, even the best drivers can still do better.

The full report, including the ranking for all 50 states, can be found at:
http://www.carinsurancecomparison.com/which-states-have-the-worst-drivers

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