[align=center]Updated:2007-01-11 14:09:46 Best States for Driving We harness statistics to rank the 50 states according to their friendliness to motorists.By CSABA CSERE

In honor of our 25th 10Best issue, I've decided to rank the 50 states and the District of Columbia according to their attractiveness to drivers. Possessing a certain nerdy talent for spreadsheets and searching the Internet for obscure information, I’ve based these rankings on nine statistical criteria.

We all like open roads, so I scoured the databases of the Federal Highway Administration to generate a table of vehicle-miles traveled per mile of road lane in every state. The results vary widely: In North Dakota, there are only 41,000 vehicle-miles traveled on each lane-mile per year (meaning that, on average, a vehicle went by every 13 minutes in each lane). At the other extreme is D.C., in which the traffic density is about 22 times as great. North Dakota scored the full 10 points in this category. D.C. got a mere 0.44 point.

Low-traffic roads are fine, but we also like roads without children playing in them, so I included a ranking of population per mile of roadway. Here again, the winner was North Dakota, with a mere seven residents per mile of road versus D.C. with about 400.

Best Driving States
The top 10Best Driving States as ranked by CARandDRIVER.com: [/align][*]1. Alaska[*]2. Montana[*]3. North Dakota[*]4. South Dakota[*]5. Utah[*]6. Wyoming[*]7. Idaho[*]8. New Mexico[*]9. Nebraska[*]10. Nevada
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Most of us also prefer roads with limited truck traffic, and the FHWA conveniently tracks this info as well. A mere three percent of Hawaii's traffic consists of heavy trucks -- not much interstate trucking opportunity there. Meanwhile, 24 percent of Wyoming’s traffic consists of big rigs. Ten points for Hawaii, 1.3 points for Wyoming.

Of course, we all want smooth roads. That condition is measured on an "International Roughness Index." Don't ask me how that's done, but the result is expressed in inches of roughness per mile of pavement. By stitching together seven spreadsheets, I compiled the percentage of roads in each state with an IRI of better than 94 per mile. The winner was Georgia, with 86 percent. D.C. again finished last, with none of its roads passing this smoothness bogey.

Spending does not always yield quality, but I decided to rank each state by the money spent annually on roads, divided by the number of licensed drivers in the state. The winner was Alaska, which spent $1078 for each driver. Those bridges to nowhere pay off big in this category. At the other extreme is Georgia, which manages to have the country's smoothest roads, while spending a fourth as much per driver as Alaska does, suggesting that perhaps chain gangs do have their benefits. Just kidding.
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Driving is safer than it's ever been, but there are still substantial differences among the states. In Mississippi, the highway death rate was 2.28 fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles driven. In Massachusetts, it was barely a third of that, at 0.87. I suspect this says more about the higher willingness of Massachusetts drivers to buckle up than it does about their inherent driving talent, which was not obvious when I went to college in tha

 

Yay for North Dakota!! It is pretty fun to drive here. You guys should visit it someday!

 

cliff notes?

 

LOL!!! That was perfect timing! I just finished reading the whole post, then I see this! Funny!!

One thing they didn't account for was the caliber of drivers in each state. While Nevada made the list of top ten, we have the worst drivers here!! That may sound like a subjective comparison, but I have driven in many states. I used to rank downtown Miami as the worst after Kingston, Jamaica. But after living in Las Vegas for the past 5 years, Vegas drivers have taken the crown from Miami.

 

Space,

With the time/effort that had to go into compiling this information you need to try to governement grants. Why do this for free when Uncle Sam may cough up some $$$$ for you doing this?????????

With that said I can understand why OH didn't make "The Best Place To Drive."
We have some of the worst roads out there. For years we locals used to have a saying, "How do you spell pothole? D-A-Y-T-O-N."
I-75 can really be an interesting ride if you're not used to driving it. Okay since about 1997 they have been working on the I-75/I-70 interchange that used to be scarier then scarey. But hey we all could spend one hundred million bucks on a few bridges right?????

I can also give testiment to the Ohio State Troopers who love to pull over and victimize innocent drivers. (been there!!!)
So you out of state people driving through... WATCH OUT!

 

ok i can add to the worse roads in Oh.
being from tehre and having to drive it as a OTR driver belive me you wore a kiddney belt acrossed the the Turnpike also.

As fas as other states,
LA. is really good at making bridges but fo some reason cant figure out how to make a flat road on land.
Also Minassota has to be some of the ruffest smooth road i ahve been on in my life.
it bounces so bad that Truck drivers have to slow down becuse the 5th wheels ahve been knowen to fail on thier roads.

 

I don't think Minnesota rodes are that bad...I was just there about a month ago. What part of Minnesota were you in?

 

I-35 north bound, right lane, a lil ways north of iowa.... wow it bounces for like 20 miles bad.... eveyones in the left lane, right lane could make ya seasick

 

i know it has nothing to do with the states, but the roads up here are pretty good, we all have our bad share of drivers, but the roads up here are pretty good, they repave all the highways constantly, and are just in the process of widenening the 401 to 3 lanes wide for about a 300 mile stretch which i happen to live on

 

there ya go, was thinking it was I -90 also heading east bound . ther efor a while it is jsut like I-35 also. up north buy the twin cities it is not to bad at all. it is down south of tha tthat it gets bad