If you’ve been frustrated while driving in Seattle and the surrounding area recently, you’re probably not alone. Earlier this week Washington was ranked as the second-worst state for driving in the country. In their ranking of “2023’s Best and Worst States to Drive in,” WalletHub placed Washington in the number-two spot for several reasons.
Read on for all the details.
According to WalletHub, “[traffic] congestion cost the average U.S. driver $869 in wasted time during 2022.” To make matters worse, the World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. at number 17 out of 141 countries for road quality—indicating there’s room for improvement, we’d say.
To compare driving experiences across the 50 states, WalletHub evaluated the data using 31 metrics. These metrics fell into four key categories:
- Access to vehicles and maintenance
- Cost of ownership and maintenance
- Traffic and infrastructure
- Safety
The specific metrics that made up each category (and thus each state’s overall score) included factors such as average gas prices in each state, number of days with precipitation, road quality, traffic fatality rate, car theft rate, and traffic indiscipline (a metric that measures incidents caused by poor driving behavior).
If you look at the chart showing each state’s ranking, you can see where Washington was ranked for each of the four key categories listed above. It ranked at number 16 in the country for access to vehicles and maintenance, number 20 for cost, number 39 for traffic and infrastructure, and at number 47 for safety. This earned it a spot on the list as the second-worst state to drive in overall.
Although this ranking was for the entire state of Washington and not just the city of Seattle, if you’ve ever driven around Seattle at night while it’s raining you might agree with the scores. It is interesting to note that when WalletHub pointed out the top five states with the most days of precipitation, Washington was not included.
However, Washington was included at number 47 for both the highest average gas prices and auto maintenance costs.
The absolute worst state to drive in, according to this ranking, is Hawaii. The state that was ranked as the best for driving is Iowa.
You can read more about this ranking over on WalletHub.
Were you surprised to find that Washington was ranked as the second-worst state for driving in the country? Let us know!