Have you been driving anywhere around the state of Tennessee and encountered some bad drivers? Did you think to yourself that Tennessee has the worst drivers in the country? If you thought that, you would be wrong. The worst drivers are in Mississippi. Tennessee is actually second when it comes to bad drivers. This conclusion comes from a new study that ranked drivers nationally. The South did not fare too well at all, as five of the top 10 states were all below the Mason Dixon line.
To figure out which state had the worst drivers, the study used these factors:
- How many drivers are in the state
- DUI arrests
- How many drivers were insured
- Tickets handed out by police officers
- Amount of traffic deaths
- The rate at which residents googled terms such as “speeding ticket” or “traffic ticket”
What made Tennessee climb so high up the chart? The state was ranked 19th for DUI arrests and was 16th when it came to deadly crashes. In every metric listed above, Tennessee appeared in the top 20 for each of them. The only reason Tennessee did not make it all the way to number one was because of its lack of top 10 finishes.
One of the positives from the study showed good news on a national level. Back in 1994, there were around 40,700 people who died because of a car accident. That number has dwindled down to 37,500 as of 2016. The report also found that during those years, the amount of fatalities per 100 million miles driven went down 32 percent.
If there is one thing to take away from this study, it is that more than ever the residents of Tennessee should take their driving habits more seriously.