According to a study of accidents, speeding tickets, DUIs, and citations from 10 million insurance quotes published this week, drivers in Utah are the worst in the country while those in Connecticut are the safest.
Researchers at Quotewizard, an insurance comparison website, discovered that Utah performed poorly in all areas of dangerous driving, including the frequency of collisions, the amount of drunk drivers on the road, and the number of tickets issued by police.
The report was made public while Maddie Anderson, 17, battled for her life after being struck by another car in Taylorsville, Utah, on Sunday, and four individuals were sent to the hospital following a collision on Route 9.
The five states with the worst drivers in the nation are Utah, California, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio. California, which finished bottom in the survey last year, still had “more DUIs during the last year than any other state,” according to experts.
The Colorado State Patrol issued a warning this week about an annual increase in accidents involving pedestrians in December, when icy winter weather sets in and makes roads more dangerous. Colorado is ranked as the 12th worst state for driving.
Researchers singled out Connecticut drivers as the “best in the nation” by a “large margin,” citing their state’s low rates of traffic tickets, DUIs, speeding fines, and collisions.
The top five states for safest driving in the nation were completed by Michigan, West Virginia, Delaware, and Arkansas.
Researchers discovered that eastern states generally had better drivers than western states across the nation, and that states with a high percentage of intoxicated drivers were also likely to experience more collisions and speeding than other states.
Last year, there were around 43,000 traffic fatalities in the US. The number of Americans using the roads has increased to its highest level in 16 years as a result of the pandemic that kept many of them at home.
Ahead of the rising number of traffic fatalities brought on by speeding, the US government’s road safety department announced plans to spend $8 million on advertisements.
Although there was less traffic on the roads in 2020 owing to the pandemic, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration campaign reported that 11,258 individuals died in speed-related collisions in that year, up 17% from 2019.
29 percent of all fatal crashes involved speed, and 87 percent of speed-related fatalities occurred on local roads rather than interstate highways.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began collecting mortality data in 1975, and between 2020 and 2020, traffic fatalities increased by 10.5 percent, the greatest percentage rise ever.
