Are you hitting the road for the holidays? Pay attention to your driving behavior but keep a watchful eye for drivers with whom you’re sharing the road.
According to a survey conducted by SmartAsset, a financial tech company, four of the top 10 states with the worst drivers are located in the South-East.
Leading the list is Florida, with Floridians searching ‘speeding tickets’ and ‘traffic tickets’ more than any other state. The state is also listed as second in the lowest number of insured drivers across US.
Second on the list is Mississippi. Mississippi has the 5th highest rate in DUI arrests across the nation. Rounding up the list at number 10 is Nevada, the 17th worst state for DUI arrests.
Thankfully, Kentucky is not on the list but this does not mean that Kentucky drivers should be complacent.
Statistics
According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Kentucky has 192 drunk driving fatalities in 2015. This is 12.3% higher than the previous year and accounts for .25% of the total traffic deaths across the country. Alcohol related crash inquiries are at a total of 4529, while DUI arrest cases were 17, 825.
In another study, this time by CDC, a total of 2041 alcohol-involved deaths were recorded in Kentucky from 2003-2012. The highest rate of death recorded in an age group is 6.7 per 100,000 people, for ages 21-34.
SmartAsset is not the only group to conduct comparison on driver behavior across all of the states. Car Insurance Comparison also looked into drivers per state in 2016 and here’s what they have on record for Kentucky.
- Fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled: 11
- Failure to obey (traffic signals, seat belt law, etc.): 4
- Drunk driving: 49
- Speeding: 44
- Careless driving: 30
- Total Score: 138
- Final Rank: 28
The highest recorded for Kentucky is failure to obey at rank 4. There’s room for improvement for all drivers, from Kentucky or not.
Keep Watch of Your Driving Behavior
As a Kentucky Accident Attorney, I would like to remind all Kentucky drivers to stay calm when behind the wheel. Everyone wants to get to their destination fast and road rage will not help in any way, if anything, it’ll only cause us stress. So please be patient especially when young drivers around are learning from adult drivers.