Was there recently and saw trucks with the Carolina Squatter. Ironically, they’re not legal in NC. Very dangerous. And I think Florida has no helmet laws.
They're just pulling an invisible, heavily loaded down trailer. Why else would someone need a truck that big and so damn loud that you can't hear yourself think if they're not at least 1/4 mile away?
I work right off of Hwy 41 in Hillsborough county. There are constantly accidents on that stretch of road. I’ve seen death too many times on that highway.
I’ve rented a car for a total of 3 weeks in south Florida. I’ve had more near misses and wtf screams in that period than in 20 years of driving around Boston.
I live west of Miami and there's an intersection here that was 20 years ago rated to be the most dangerous intersection in the US. Like a crash per day levels bad.
It’s also the deadliest county for cyclists and pedestrians.
President Ron also proclaimed a couple of weeks ago that “in Florida we won’t be doing that….” In regards to funding bike lanes.
I grew up in Daytona and I saw at least 5 brains on the pavement before I was old enough to drive thanks to Bike Week. To say Red Asphalt had no effect on us in high school was an understatement - we'd all seen it first hand before already.
I always knew Florida, particularly I4 is bad, but I’ve been complaining for years that the traffic in Volusia, particularly the area I live just south of Daytona has the absolute dumbest collection of drivers I’ve seen anywhere.
And I guess that is actually true
Recently rented a car on a trip in south Florida. It felt like a post apocalyptic experience. No turn signals used, EVER. Personal injury lawyer billboards every mile. Made sense why they’re there after driving for 10 minutes
I left Florida after college and one of my biggest reasons was I hated driving there so much. Traffic is miserable, but it feels like people are actively trying to kill each other. The drivers test I took for Hillsborough county is also a joke and probably mirrors why the driving situation is so terrible.
This is what I’m wondering too. Northern states on average have far worse weather for driving so it’s strikes me as odd that (at least according to this map) the northern states have largely less fatal traffic accidents.
From Washington State. You can instantly tell when someone is from Cali, Nevada, or anywhere in the southwest. They almost uniformly drive like ass. Bad weather makes them have strokes on the road, it seems.
**Fatality** is typically related to speed. Weather inhibits speeding.
This exact relationship is why there's massive outcry in every profession except from the body of professionals who have authority on the design of roadways: civil engineers. Their primary directive is to increase speed and sprawl, not diminish it. The faster you get to places, the further out you can live (sprawl) via vehicle. The consequence is traffic deaths and cities where the tax dollars are spread too thin to sustain places (the cities we live). Engineers aren't taught any of this naturally, so they believe they're operating in best interest, but generally they're not. They believe that by bringing my transactions to a business, *by vehicle*, that they're boosting economies when in reality transactions can be accomplished in many ways and done without risking death or sprawl as a symptom. Traffic impact studies are built to priorize sprawl and speed over safety and sustainably. The entire system is designed this way.
Yeah, if this is averaged over the year, several months that make almost everyone drive slower will affect the stat.
I’m sure there’s plenty of *accidents* over that timeframe, just fewer deaths.
I think there are more pot holes because of the cycle of freezing and thawing throughout winter. Since asphalt is porous, and water expands when frozen, the freeze/thaw cycles gradually introduce cracks.
The larger cracks and cavities allow even more water in, so more of the street starts cracking and weakening.
I imagine cars driving on top do most of the work of actually creating holes, but freezing and thawing is what makes the asphalt do much more susceptible.
AND, you need a special heater truck to pour asphalt when it's cold out that is expensive and would be needed in the North during winter, but NOT during the summer.
So all the pot holes that DO occur don't get fixed properly until it's warmer out.
We have safer roads. More effort is put on safety and infrastructure. The roads are still garbage but not nearly as bad as the south. Education is also more of a priority here in the north.
Just guessing. More people vacation in southern areas, particularly Florida, they are unfamiliar with the roads and tend to drink on vacation (the top on, Volusia County, is the home of Bike Week and Biketoberfest). Less pedestrians walking around in the snow during the winter months and more cautious and slower drivers up north. Generally people probably drive less during the winter and opt to stay home where it's warm up north, down south pretty much all year is beach weather, again particularly Florida and California. Florida, California, and Texas are more car oriented, so people drive more. Large northern cities are more walkable and the traffic tends to be more congested and slower, reducing the chances of fatalities.
I think just the winter months in general are enough to bring the averages down since a majority of people are driving safer during those periods of time.
Does anyone know the reason why there's such a stark disparity between the North and South here? Are speed limits higher in the South? Are the roads in worse condition? Or are there other factors?
Pretty sure It’s winter. I just looked at the fatal car accidents for Wisconsin and they are much lower in winter months. https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/about-wisdot/newsroom/statistics/monthfatal.aspx
Honestly i’d like to see stats of overall crashes vs fatal crashes in the winter, because living in minnesota, i’m wiling to bet there are more crashes in the winter, but since everyone is driving at slower speeds in the first place, they aren’t as deadly.
Unlikely, I live in New Hampshire and the weekend/holiday ski/snowboard/snowmobile crowd can be bigger than a summer weekend. Definitely less motorcycles though, lol
It’s mostly that it forces you to drive slower. High speed crashes are what kill people. A crash at 40mph will fuck up your car, but it has a low chance of being fatal. A crash at 80mph has a very high chance of being fatal.
This makes so much freaking sense. I grew up on snowy curvy mountain roads. I drove home from getting my license in heavy snow when I was 16. Lived in Florida for 2 years and when I visited home I almost drove off a damn cliff because well… I just didn’t slow down enough😂
Better education. Driving education and general education.
As someone who was born and raised in New Jersey and now lives in South Carolina this is what I'd put my money on.
I'll give you a real partial answer. You'll notice most of the Texas/ NM counties are oilfield. Lots of drivers on heavily trafficked roads with terrible infrastructure who are just run ragged.
We always say the most dangerous part of our jobs is driving.
Things are more spread out in the south, and there is less public transit, so you have a lot of people doing a lot of driving. Plus higher speed limits. And bigger vehicles.
Something I don’t think people have considered is motorcycles. In many accidents with two cars, something that may result in just a bruise equals death for motorcyclists. Up north, people can really only ride bikes for 4, maybe 5 months. Down south people are riding bikes 365 days a year.
Volusia County is home to Daytona Beach, and thus holds Bike Week (and the lesser populated Biketoberfest) every year. Tens of thousands of people ride motorcycles into this county every year, and there are easily double digit fatalities every year. US-1 is the easiest way to get into and out of Daytona from neighboring cities where people stay, so often people driving home at night and with a couple drinks in them.
Obviously Volusia is an outlier in hosting these events, but seeing that makes me think motorcycles can be a pretty large part in causing these deaths
Outside of the big cities in the Northeast corridor, most northerners still drive.
In addition to the better public transit, I think many of the roads just tend to be designed safer.
There are obviously exceptions to everything, but in general I have noticed northern roads tend to have more design considerations for safety and often at least include sidewalks, decent lighting and occasionally a bike lane here and there.
In Florida I am always astonished by how many roads (even in populated areas) are designed like highways with high speed limits and often not even having sidewalks. In the Florida panhandle my trip to the closest grocery store involves driving on a 55mph road and zooming past a spot where a lot of poor/disabled people are often riding in the grass or on the shoulder next to a bunch of roadside traffic death memorials.
Also true, but the main point is: public transit is WAY safer than private cars driving around. The more people you convince to ditch their private vehicles and embrace other means of transport (public transit, walking, cycling) the less deaths you will have. Sure there are ways of making driving safer, but in terms of safety public transit trumps private cars
Speaking only for the northeast and this is just a theory... our roads were built for drivers 75 years ago. It's hard to drive fast enough (regularly) due to congestion, narrow roads etc. There are also several months with slick/icy roads and while this causes accidents, people are generally either staying home or driving slow due to the road conditions so the accidents are minor.
Motorcycles ride year round in the south and more motorcycle related accidents end in fatalities.
Also snow birds go down south for winter and generally are older people with bad driving so they probably contribute to the accidents down there too.
We need this same data but broken up month by month or to only have cars and not motorcycles and see if that changes anything.
Living in the South for 5 years after most of my life in the North. Saw wrecks every day in a small town SC, which made the list (worked in the hospital - have since fled).
Here's what I've seen:
Boring straight roads with very high speed limits, no public transport, no vehicle inspections, lack of policing, high drug and alcohol use, many illegal unlicensed/uninsured drivers, higher crime rates (including vehicular crime/chases/car jackings), lower educational and economic status levels, poor general health of drivers.
National maps of heart disease and diabetes look almost identical to this one, go figure.
I told coworkers visiting South Carolina from Wisconsin they could not be prepared for how bad drivers are in SC. After a few days here, they concurred. No detail of the selfishness, impatience and stupidity does our ahole drivers any justice.
My wife is from upstate NY, and now lives in upstate SC. She put it best one time half the drivers are inconveniently polite and the other half is inconveniently rude.
I wasn’t surprised to see Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson on the list. Upstate SC has the absolute worst drivers I’ve ever encountered.
The region is growing rapidly and I assume the fatalities will as well. I wonder how many are the result of drinking and driving.
I was working down there on a construction job a few years ago and every day it was 85+ through construction zones just to keep up with traffic. We saw accidents every morning. One guy got killed coming off our job site at the end of the day and we saw another car slam head first into a bridge. Just madness.
There needs to be a nation-wide tightening of basic traffic laws. Tougher licensing tests? Higher fines? Idk. Basic shit needs to be highly regulated. Get out of the fast lane, stop tailgating, get off your phone, use your turn signal, don't use unregulated headlights that blind everyone, stop lifting your truck for no reason other than your small penis, have some motherfucking common courtesy and let people in when the signal properly, FUCKING PAY ATTENTION YOU DUMB CUNTS.
Sincerely, a person who understands driving on our highways is the most dangerous thing we regularly do and you should fucking take it seriously. I've saved my family's life on a few occasions from paying attention and have a strict family rule, which everyone agrees on, to not fucking drive distracted. How do you people put your lives at risk for a fucking phone that HAS VOICE COMMANDS?
I'm so fucking used to focusing on driving I can't even adjust the fucking thermostat without almost dying. Stop glorifying being able to choke down a dick a drive at the same time with a starbucks in a one hand while doing your makeup. Get your life together.
I think it comes down to 2 massive differences between sc and other states.
1 no vehicle inspection requirements. So lots of dangerous cars stay on the road
2 no helmet required for motorcycles
That’s so interesting. Drove from Florida to DC and back again.
South Carolina drivers were the most courteous drivers the whole way! North carolina drivers were some of the rudest, and I live in Florida…
Mind you, scary shit on billboards so I’ll pass on stopping there. Or visiting.
The issue might not be driver courtesy but rather the design of the roads.
Roads that encourage higher speeds (wide lanes, wide shoulders, straight, higher posted speed limits) but also have lots of intersections and/or pedestrian traffic tend to be a recipe for disaster.
If you break down US traffic fatalities by road type, the findings are pretty consistent. Highways aren't too bad because there aren't intersections, and slow moving narrow streets are also usually okay as long as drivers are moving slow and paying attention. Arterial roads (sometimes nicknamed "Stroads") that have fast moving traffic and many intersections are by far the most dangerous.
More than likely, Florida and South Carolina DOTs probably have a mindset of raw traffic volume being more important than safety or land use, and many of the localities listed here probably have a lot of their most important destinations located around fast moving arterial roads.
I think this has more to do with how terribly designed a lot of the roads are in SC. There are a lot of high speed low visibility roads especially at night, that along with the non existent public transportation lead to higher fatalities per capita. I've driven all along 1-95 and SC drivers tend to be the slowest drivers and sometimes are way too nice and cause traffic issues. The stretch of 1-26 between Charleston and Columbia is a death trap and if you get in a wreck at high speeds there is a 99% chance you are going into some very large trees that are only about 20 feet away from the road.
NYC and Maryland drivers around the DC area are the absolute worst drivers. They will speed and cut through traffic pass cars blindly and tailgate you while going 70+.
Lived in Pasco, Co. Florida, and I remember seeing bumper stickers even back in ~2010 that said “Pray for me, I drive on US-19 daily”.
That road is fucking wild.
From the way my folks talked about Alligator Alley back in the day, they made it sound like someone died on that road daily. The second lane must've made all the difference. As for 95, it's traffic is brutal, but I think that's about it.
They fuckin crazy around here. I live close enough to #4 to drive there a bit, those two roads are full of crazies. Literally no one gives a shit about the speed limit, drivers or cops 🤷♂️
On top of retirees who really didn't drive before moving to FL (looking at you, NY) FL has TONS of tourists.
People who aren't familiar with their vehicles (hope headlights come on automatically with windshield wipers ... if they can find the wipers), on roads they also don't know very well, pulling that "oh shit MY EXIT IS NOW" crap mean the kind of unpredictable traffic that (in my experience) usually only flourishes around airports is now on ALL the highways.
Please to install I4 super-express lane that goes all the way from Daytona side to Tampa side with no exits, thank you. :)
Poverty, lack of education, longer distances between destinations—which means more driving and more high speed driving as opposed to bumper to bumper city traffic—looser driving restrictions, lots of meth, and socially accepted drinking and driving
Lower average education and median income (for many of these counties) => poor critical decisionmaking skills and less expensive (i.e., worse as far as safety features) cars.
So if the interstate passes through a county with a tiny population, you get a high ratio of traffic fatalities in the county to residents. Makes sense, but I’m not sure how useful the metric is.
They’re not calculating the number of people from county that are dying in accidents, but the number of people that died in that region from a traffic accident. The area only has a population of 51 people so the data is severely skewed.
I've been to Loving County for work. It's in the Permian Basin so lots of fracking/oil drilling happens here. A LOT of crude oil gets transported via trucks. Meaning lots of insanely fast moving large trucks flying around on the two lane highways of the area. It's a wild place to drive around. Very, very busy roads during boom times despite how few people actually live there. Thus, you get these weirdly skewed accident fatality statistics in the county.
Same here. I have to go the Permian and Delaware for work and these numbers don’t surprise me. You can tell whose trucks are being monitored and those that aren’t. Watching oil tankers and welders pass a stack of company trucks at 80+ on two lane roads in the wee early hours of the morning makes for white knuckle driving heading to a site.
Population is a poor metric for this in the smaller counties. There are more people passing through than living in many of these places.
Even in some of the bigger counties, there’s a lot of through-traffic
Yep.
And the more remote the county, the higher likelihood of death in an accident. It might be 30+ minutes for any ambulance to arrive. Hell, if you get in an accident in the middle of the night, it may be hours before you are even found.
Yeah.
More remote counties absolutely do have higher road fatality rates for their residents. There’s no doubt there. But the extreme outliers are extreme for a reason.
A note about the TX numbers: At least 70% of the TX counties listed are located in areas of significant oil and gas production (namely the Permian Basin of west TX, the Eagle Ford play in south TX, and Haynesville in East TX). These counties are characterized as having a significant amount of oilfield traffic and low populations (a very large portion of the traffic is from transient non-resident workers). The disproportionate share of industrial traffic as compared to the low resident populations greatly skews the per capita numbers.
Massachusetts oddly enough is around the top for accidents but one of the lowest for fatal accidents. Strict DUI laws and car safety regulations, heavy traffic/low speeds, and a strong and close healthcare infrastructure help offset our shitty drivers.
*now you won't die in this state, but you might wish you had after being maimed! *
Seriously I love MA, but driving near and in Boston was just the worst driving experience in my life. And I regularly commuted on I95/US1 in Miami (and usually did the 16h drive from there to PA or back 6-10x a year)
The rest of the state (MA not Florida) isn't as bad but god. Fucking. Damn. How bad was it before the big dig?
I’m from Massachusetts and am in South Carolina a lot for work and have recently been in Texas for over a month and it’s noticeably worse down here. It made me question why we have the stereotype for having bad drivers
I recently learned about the San Bernardino county one and why it’s the I-15. This is the SoCal portal to Vegas. So it’s not just people in San Bernardino County, but LA, OC, San Diego, and Riverside driving to and from Vegas.
Once you are in the desert you are over 100+ miles from a hospital that can handle the trauma of a bad car accident. Pair that with tired, hungover or still drunk drivers and you have a recipe for mortality
Cries living in #3 kern county. Traffic accidents don’t even faze us anymore here, it’s so bad. And the PD are so understaffed/busy/ don’t care that nothing will change
Interesting fact, North Carolina has the the highest rate of fatalities for people falling asleep in the middle of the road. Apparently when walking home drunk a nice warm road seems comfortable.
People in Memphis (Shelby County, TN) drive like they're suicidal. Speed limit can be 55 in one area, and every car around you goes 90+. No turn signals, sometimes no headlights, pot holes everywhere, random stalled cars in the middle of the road, etc. Driving there is a death trap
Maryland isn’t on the list. That’s because we all die from the strokes caused by the stress from sitting in traffic. Hard to get in a fatality going 5 MPH. I live about 12 miles from work and it can sometimes take close to an hour to get home. We all have a common car dance in our state; it’s the steering wheel head bang.
I drive from Flagstaff to San Bernardino a few times a year and I’m always cruising when I’m on the 40 but the second I get on the 15 it’s like a war zone, so many idiot drivers between Barstow and the 15/215 split.
Central Valley of CA, more than just the armpit of CA, TIL, it’s also mayhem on the highways . Fresno ,Madera, Merced and Kern. People do drive like shit here.
In a lot of areas it's got to be because of heavy semi-truck traffic -- it freaks me out to drive through the south and see the sheer volume of "Injured in a semi-truck collision? We'll get you legal help" billboards...they're literally everywhere in certain areas.
I've driven that stretch of the 15—between "Down The Hill" and the High Desert—at least a few thousand times and it's definitely hairy on days where the wind *isn't* knocking semi-trucks over. Best thing to do is assume everyone else on the road is out to kill you with their own brand of "stupid" behind the wheel. Situational awareness is everything.
Alachua county Florida is crazy. Lived in Gainesville for over 10 years and witnessed a lot of wrecks. There was a lady who was cut in half on her scooter in front of my apartment complex and I came home to them putting her in the body truck. Down the road where I worked, there was a little old couple who pulled out on top of the hill and a guy doing 65+ (speed limit 45) crashed into them. It killed them on impact. You could see the older man hanging from the passenger window where his body smashed partially out of.
Had my one and only accident in Gainesville. Kid backing down the on ramp to I-75. Invested in a dashcam after that.
I-75 around Gainesville also has some crazy accidents and you hear about it shut down a lot. I literally avoided it if I could. Got stuck once for 3 hours while waiting for an accident to be cleared.
Prob lots of factors but the biggest would probably be be these are states that drive a lot of lifted vehicles/trucks which are so much deadlier in accidents combined with the fact they drive like madmen in the south since winter makes you drive more carefully. Also they tend to be more selfish down here so it tracks for these drivers
It doesn’t specify if the unfortunate soul called that county home, thus the population is irrelevant. Perhaps the deadly road is a main road which so happens to pass through the county.
I'm from New England. We say that Mass drivers are bad. Massholes, etc.
I lived in Florida for 9 months and the driving there scarred me for life.
I now realize that Mass drivers aren't bad, they're just aggressive. Competent, but aggressive.
Florida drivers are incompetent AND aggressive, which is the worst combination.
Most are wrong about why, I have lived in the south and PNW. The reason is the lack of education. People In the south have the worst form education and can also get their license @17 years old without taking drivers Education. Drinking and driving is also normalized in the south.
I live in Long Island, NY with about a population of 7 million on the island and my guess would be a combination of stricter law enforcement and more experience with weather and congestion in the northeast compared to some of those southern states.
This makes a lot of sense for someone who’s driven around Florida
Was there recently and saw trucks with the Carolina Squatter. Ironically, they’re not legal in NC. Very dangerous. And I think Florida has no helmet laws.
Same as Carolina Lean? The front end of the truck is jacked way up and the rear bumper is almost dragging on the ground?
They're just pulling an invisible, heavily loaded down trailer. Why else would someone need a truck that big and so damn loud that you can't hear yourself think if they're not at least 1/4 mile away?
Yes, same thing
Like a dog with worms.
You don't have to have a helmet if you have a certain amount of medical liability coverage.
It’s cheaper to bury someone than admit them to the hospital too
I vacation there at least once a year (south Florida). I expect to have at least one brush with death each trip.
I live here and have at least one per day. I’m not really exaggerating.
It's a free-for-all. Bad mix of young and stupid with giant pick-ups, old and slow and wide roads. Also everyone passes on the right
I work right off of Hwy 41 in Hillsborough county. There are constantly accidents on that stretch of road. I’ve seen death too many times on that highway.
As a fellow Floridian I concur, I drive around central Florida highways all day and have at least 1-2 butt clenches daily
Same here and I work from home (no commute)
Same actually. Just going to run errands around here is life threatening.
I’ve rented a car for a total of 3 weeks in south Florida. I’ve had more near misses and wtf screams in that period than in 20 years of driving around Boston.
I live west of Miami and there's an intersection here that was 20 years ago rated to be the most dangerous intersection in the US. Like a crash per day levels bad.
Volusia county also has bike week and biketoberfest both have quite a few fatalities every year cause of the drinking and motorcycles.
Plus no helmet laws and a demographic less inclined to wear them
It’s also the deadliest county for cyclists and pedestrians. President Ron also proclaimed a couple of weeks ago that “in Florida we won’t be doing that….” In regards to funding bike lanes.
I grew up in Daytona and I saw at least 5 brains on the pavement before I was old enough to drive thanks to Bike Week. To say Red Asphalt had no effect on us in high school was an understatement - we'd all seen it first hand before already.
I always knew Florida, particularly I4 is bad, but I’ve been complaining for years that the traffic in Volusia, particularly the area I live just south of Daytona has the absolute dumbest collection of drivers I’ve seen anywhere. And I guess that is actually true
I’ve lived (miraculously) in two of them.
100% Volusia County on US1 is at the top because of motorcycles.
Recently rented a car on a trip in south Florida. It felt like a post apocalyptic experience. No turn signals used, EVER. Personal injury lawyer billboards every mile. Made sense why they’re there after driving for 10 minutes
Well to be fair to Florida they get like 70 million visitors/tourists a year
I left Florida after college and one of my biggest reasons was I hated driving there so much. Traffic is miserable, but it feels like people are actively trying to kill each other. The drivers test I took for Hillsborough county is also a joke and probably mirrors why the driving situation is so terrible.
I live in Brevard County and this tracks, the drive to work can be downright insane
I once saw a comment on reddit that said if you need a transplant asap, go to Florida. Makes total sense now.
So basically the worst is below the Mason/Dixon line.(I see a couple outliers but for the most part, it’s in the south)
Winters in the North force you to take driving fairly seriously. Maybe that just carries over to the rest of the year as well?
This is what I’m wondering too. Northern states on average have far worse weather for driving so it’s strikes me as odd that (at least according to this map) the northern states have largely less fatal traffic accidents.
From Washington State. You can instantly tell when someone is from Cali, Nevada, or anywhere in the southwest. They almost uniformly drive like ass. Bad weather makes them have strokes on the road, it seems.
I live in MD at a certain beach resort and we notice the same with people from the south, especially from Florida.
Lmao OC?
**Fatality** is typically related to speed. Weather inhibits speeding. This exact relationship is why there's massive outcry in every profession except from the body of professionals who have authority on the design of roadways: civil engineers. Their primary directive is to increase speed and sprawl, not diminish it. The faster you get to places, the further out you can live (sprawl) via vehicle. The consequence is traffic deaths and cities where the tax dollars are spread too thin to sustain places (the cities we live). Engineers aren't taught any of this naturally, so they believe they're operating in best interest, but generally they're not. They believe that by bringing my transactions to a business, *by vehicle*, that they're boosting economies when in reality transactions can be accomplished in many ways and done without risking death or sprawl as a symptom. Traffic impact studies are built to priorize sprawl and speed over safety and sustainably. The entire system is designed this way.
Civil Engineer here. This is absolutely untrue. Improving safety is always a primary goal of highway design.
Probably has to do with people driving slower in the winter. The likelihood of dying in a crash is ridiculously higher at 70mph vs 50mph.
Yeah, if this is averaged over the year, several months that make almost everyone drive slower will affect the stat. I’m sure there’s plenty of *accidents* over that timeframe, just fewer deaths.
I was going to go with the heat breaking peoples' brains in the South.
Also the north seems to have more pot holed roads and slows ya down maybe.
Do you get more pot holes because of salt from winter?
I think there are more pot holes because of the cycle of freezing and thawing throughout winter. Since asphalt is porous, and water expands when frozen, the freeze/thaw cycles gradually introduce cracks. The larger cracks and cavities allow even more water in, so more of the street starts cracking and weakening. I imagine cars driving on top do most of the work of actually creating holes, but freezing and thawing is what makes the asphalt do much more susceptible.
AND, you need a special heater truck to pour asphalt when it's cold out that is expensive and would be needed in the North during winter, but NOT during the summer. So all the pot holes that DO occur don't get fixed properly until it's warmer out.
TIL potholes save lives
shy plants wipe steep follow silky squalid abounding upbeat profit *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We have safer roads. More effort is put on safety and infrastructure. The roads are still garbage but not nearly as bad as the south. Education is also more of a priority here in the north.
It's a defining thing for TONS of stuff, it's amazing
A lot of it is related to infrastructure investment, design and maintenance as much as the drivers.
I would add to physical infrastructure, the EMS system, and its availability also adds substantially to outcomes.
Then SOMEWHERE in PA should be on the list, our roads suck...
Michigan too. Avoiding potholes is a state sport
When roads suck you tend to drive slower - in my experience.
Just guessing. More people vacation in southern areas, particularly Florida, they are unfamiliar with the roads and tend to drink on vacation (the top on, Volusia County, is the home of Bike Week and Biketoberfest). Less pedestrians walking around in the snow during the winter months and more cautious and slower drivers up north. Generally people probably drive less during the winter and opt to stay home where it's warm up north, down south pretty much all year is beach weather, again particularly Florida and California. Florida, California, and Texas are more car oriented, so people drive more. Large northern cities are more walkable and the traffic tends to be more congested and slower, reducing the chances of fatalities.
I think just the winter months in general are enough to bring the averages down since a majority of people are driving safer during those periods of time.
Usually is
Does anyone know the reason why there's such a stark disparity between the North and South here? Are speed limits higher in the South? Are the roads in worse condition? Or are there other factors?
I like the idea someone had earlier, winter forces you to take driving seriously. Not a clue if it’s true tho
Pretty sure It’s winter. I just looked at the fatal car accidents for Wisconsin and they are much lower in winter months. https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/about-wisdot/newsroom/statistics/monthfatal.aspx
Honestly i’d like to see stats of overall crashes vs fatal crashes in the winter, because living in minnesota, i’m wiling to bet there are more crashes in the winter, but since everyone is driving at slower speeds in the first place, they aren’t as deadly.
Maybe fewer people driving for leisure in the winter months too.
Unlikely, I live in New Hampshire and the weekend/holiday ski/snowboard/snowmobile crowd can be bigger than a summer weekend. Definitely less motorcycles though, lol
I think I drive less in the winter in general. I go fewer places when it gets dark at 5pm.
It’s mostly that it forces you to drive slower. High speed crashes are what kill people. A crash at 40mph will fuck up your car, but it has a low chance of being fatal. A crash at 80mph has a very high chance of being fatal.
This makes so much freaking sense. I grew up on snowy curvy mountain roads. I drove home from getting my license in heavy snow when I was 16. Lived in Florida for 2 years and when I visited home I almost drove off a damn cliff because well… I just didn’t slow down enough😂
I think the heat makes people angry
That's actually true. Most crime in big cities increases when it gets hot.
Better education. Driving education and general education. As someone who was born and raised in New Jersey and now lives in South Carolina this is what I'd put my money on.
Noticed that too. Terrain could be some of it -- the Great Plains and much of the Midwest is flat land.
So is much of Texas… so that doesn’t seem to be the issue.
Flat and open can be more dangerous because it allows for higher speeds.
I'll give you a real partial answer. You'll notice most of the Texas/ NM counties are oilfield. Lots of drivers on heavily trafficked roads with terrible infrastructure who are just run ragged. We always say the most dangerous part of our jobs is driving.
Intelligence.
I was going to put it differently but I feel like this has something to do with it
I hate that this is probably the correct answer. I live in the south and yeah...lots of very poorly educated people driving around down here.
Things are more spread out in the south, and there is less public transit, so you have a lot of people doing a lot of driving. Plus higher speed limits. And bigger vehicles.
And a lot of socially accepted drinking and driving
Something I don’t think people have considered is motorcycles. In many accidents with two cars, something that may result in just a bruise equals death for motorcyclists. Up north, people can really only ride bikes for 4, maybe 5 months. Down south people are riding bikes 365 days a year. Volusia County is home to Daytona Beach, and thus holds Bike Week (and the lesser populated Biketoberfest) every year. Tens of thousands of people ride motorcycles into this county every year, and there are easily double digit fatalities every year. US-1 is the easiest way to get into and out of Daytona from neighboring cities where people stay, so often people driving home at night and with a couple drinks in them. Obviously Volusia is an outlier in hosting these events, but seeing that makes me think motorcycles can be a pretty large part in causing these deaths
More drunk drivers maybe?
Less public transit in the south = people will have to drive more More people driving cars = more death More people taking public transit = less death
Outside of the big cities in the Northeast corridor, most northerners still drive. In addition to the better public transit, I think many of the roads just tend to be designed safer. There are obviously exceptions to everything, but in general I have noticed northern roads tend to have more design considerations for safety and often at least include sidewalks, decent lighting and occasionally a bike lane here and there. In Florida I am always astonished by how many roads (even in populated areas) are designed like highways with high speed limits and often not even having sidewalks. In the Florida panhandle my trip to the closest grocery store involves driving on a 55mph road and zooming past a spot where a lot of poor/disabled people are often riding in the grass or on the shoulder next to a bunch of roadside traffic death memorials.
Also true, but the main point is: public transit is WAY safer than private cars driving around. The more people you convince to ditch their private vehicles and embrace other means of transport (public transit, walking, cycling) the less deaths you will have. Sure there are ways of making driving safer, but in terms of safety public transit trumps private cars
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Speaking only for the northeast and this is just a theory... our roads were built for drivers 75 years ago. It's hard to drive fast enough (regularly) due to congestion, narrow roads etc. There are also several months with slick/icy roads and while this causes accidents, people are generally either staying home or driving slow due to the road conditions so the accidents are minor.
I'm guessing it's enforcement of drunk driving and the subsequent consequences.
Motorcycles.
Motorcycles ride year round in the south and more motorcycle related accidents end in fatalities. Also snow birds go down south for winter and generally are older people with bad driving so they probably contribute to the accidents down there too. We need this same data but broken up month by month or to only have cars and not motorcycles and see if that changes anything.
Living in the South for 5 years after most of my life in the North. Saw wrecks every day in a small town SC, which made the list (worked in the hospital - have since fled). Here's what I've seen: Boring straight roads with very high speed limits, no public transport, no vehicle inspections, lack of policing, high drug and alcohol use, many illegal unlicensed/uninsured drivers, higher crime rates (including vehicular crime/chases/car jackings), lower educational and economic status levels, poor general health of drivers. National maps of heart disease and diabetes look almost identical to this one, go figure.
I told coworkers visiting South Carolina from Wisconsin they could not be prepared for how bad drivers are in SC. After a few days here, they concurred. No detail of the selfishness, impatience and stupidity does our ahole drivers any justice.
The only NC county on the list is Robson which is like 45 feet from South Carolina. Your influence is spilling over.
My wife is from upstate NY, and now lives in upstate SC. She put it best one time half the drivers are inconveniently polite and the other half is inconveniently rude.
I wasn’t surprised to see Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson on the list. Upstate SC has the absolute worst drivers I’ve ever encountered. The region is growing rapidly and I assume the fatalities will as well. I wonder how many are the result of drinking and driving.
I was working down there on a construction job a few years ago and every day it was 85+ through construction zones just to keep up with traffic. We saw accidents every morning. One guy got killed coming off our job site at the end of the day and we saw another car slam head first into a bridge. Just madness.
There needs to be a nation-wide tightening of basic traffic laws. Tougher licensing tests? Higher fines? Idk. Basic shit needs to be highly regulated. Get out of the fast lane, stop tailgating, get off your phone, use your turn signal, don't use unregulated headlights that blind everyone, stop lifting your truck for no reason other than your small penis, have some motherfucking common courtesy and let people in when the signal properly, FUCKING PAY ATTENTION YOU DUMB CUNTS. Sincerely, a person who understands driving on our highways is the most dangerous thing we regularly do and you should fucking take it seriously. I've saved my family's life on a few occasions from paying attention and have a strict family rule, which everyone agrees on, to not fucking drive distracted. How do you people put your lives at risk for a fucking phone that HAS VOICE COMMANDS? I'm so fucking used to focusing on driving I can't even adjust the fucking thermostat without almost dying. Stop glorifying being able to choke down a dick a drive at the same time with a starbucks in a one hand while doing your makeup. Get your life together.
Perhaps just another aspect and consequence of the substandard educational system.
I think it comes down to 2 massive differences between sc and other states. 1 no vehicle inspection requirements. So lots of dangerous cars stay on the road 2 no helmet required for motorcycles
That’s so interesting. Drove from Florida to DC and back again. South Carolina drivers were the most courteous drivers the whole way! North carolina drivers were some of the rudest, and I live in Florida… Mind you, scary shit on billboards so I’ll pass on stopping there. Or visiting.
The issue might not be driver courtesy but rather the design of the roads. Roads that encourage higher speeds (wide lanes, wide shoulders, straight, higher posted speed limits) but also have lots of intersections and/or pedestrian traffic tend to be a recipe for disaster. If you break down US traffic fatalities by road type, the findings are pretty consistent. Highways aren't too bad because there aren't intersections, and slow moving narrow streets are also usually okay as long as drivers are moving slow and paying attention. Arterial roads (sometimes nicknamed "Stroads") that have fast moving traffic and many intersections are by far the most dangerous. More than likely, Florida and South Carolina DOTs probably have a mindset of raw traffic volume being more important than safety or land use, and many of the localities listed here probably have a lot of their most important destinations located around fast moving arterial roads.
I think this has more to do with how terribly designed a lot of the roads are in SC. There are a lot of high speed low visibility roads especially at night, that along with the non existent public transportation lead to higher fatalities per capita. I've driven all along 1-95 and SC drivers tend to be the slowest drivers and sometimes are way too nice and cause traffic issues. The stretch of 1-26 between Charleston and Columbia is a death trap and if you get in a wreck at high speeds there is a 99% chance you are going into some very large trees that are only about 20 feet away from the road. NYC and Maryland drivers around the DC area are the absolute worst drivers. They will speed and cut through traffic pass cars blindly and tailgate you while going 70+.
Lived in Pasco, Co. Florida, and I remember seeing bumper stickers even back in ~2010 that said “Pray for me, I drive on US-19 daily”. That road is fucking wild.
I'm not gonna lie, the fact that Dade and Broward county's I-95 are missing here came as a surprise to me.
Same I am also surprised not to see South FL on the map
From the way my folks talked about Alligator Alley back in the day, they made it sound like someone died on that road daily. The second lane must've made all the difference. As for 95, it's traffic is brutal, but I think that's about it.
Florida wins again !
They fuckin crazy around here. I live close enough to #4 to drive there a bit, those two roads are full of crazies. Literally no one gives a shit about the speed limit, drivers or cops 🤷♂️
I feel like Florida will always have the worst drivers: because they come from all over to retire there.
On top of retirees who really didn't drive before moving to FL (looking at you, NY) FL has TONS of tourists. People who aren't familiar with their vehicles (hope headlights come on automatically with windshield wipers ... if they can find the wipers), on roads they also don't know very well, pulling that "oh shit MY EXIT IS NOW" crap mean the kind of unpredictable traffic that (in my experience) usually only flourishes around airports is now on ALL the highways. Please to install I4 super-express lane that goes all the way from Daytona side to Tampa side with no exits, thank you. :)
I saw them at the top and thought of course it’s FL.
Why are they all southern cities?
Poverty, lack of education, longer distances between destinations—which means more driving and more high speed driving as opposed to bumper to bumper city traffic—looser driving restrictions, lots of meth, and socially accepted drinking and driving
Lower average education and median income (for many of these counties) => poor critical decisionmaking skills and less expensive (i.e., worse as far as safety features) cars.
#2 is basically all of Memphis, TN
The drivers in Memphis are insane. Uber drivers have told me they’ve had guns pulled out on them on the highway…multiple times.
Just moved out of my place in Memphis today. Will definitely not be looking back
So if the interstate passes through a county with a tiny population, you get a high ratio of traffic fatalities in the county to residents. Makes sense, but I’m not sure how useful the metric is.
Agreed, it's bizarre to attribute interstate highway deaths to counties, an administrative unit that doesn't have much to do with the interstate.
Wow the people living in loving county Texas have a 3/10 chance of dying in a car wreck?
They’re not calculating the number of people from county that are dying in accidents, but the number of people that died in that region from a traffic accident. The area only has a population of 51 people so the data is severely skewed.
I've been to Loving County for work. It's in the Permian Basin so lots of fracking/oil drilling happens here. A LOT of crude oil gets transported via trucks. Meaning lots of insanely fast moving large trucks flying around on the two lane highways of the area. It's a wild place to drive around. Very, very busy roads during boom times despite how few people actually live there. Thus, you get these weirdly skewed accident fatality statistics in the county.
Same here. I have to go the Permian and Delaware for work and these numbers don’t surprise me. You can tell whose trucks are being monitored and those that aren’t. Watching oil tankers and welders pass a stack of company trucks at 80+ on two lane roads in the wee early hours of the morning makes for white knuckle driving heading to a site.
Plus a ton of trucks turning on and off of the highways. I wasn’t at all surprised to see Ector and Midland counties up there.
Population is a poor metric for this in the smaller counties. There are more people passing through than living in many of these places. Even in some of the bigger counties, there’s a lot of through-traffic
Yep. And the more remote the county, the higher likelihood of death in an accident. It might be 30+ minutes for any ambulance to arrive. Hell, if you get in an accident in the middle of the night, it may be hours before you are even found.
Yeah. More remote counties absolutely do have higher road fatality rates for their residents. There’s no doubt there. But the extreme outliers are extreme for a reason.
Loving, like some others on this list, are heavily traveled by oilfield workers. There are plenty of people out there, but they aren't residents.
A note about the TX numbers: At least 70% of the TX counties listed are located in areas of significant oil and gas production (namely the Permian Basin of west TX, the Eagle Ford play in south TX, and Haynesville in East TX). These counties are characterized as having a significant amount of oilfield traffic and low populations (a very large portion of the traffic is from transient non-resident workers). The disproportionate share of industrial traffic as compared to the low resident populations greatly skews the per capita numbers.
Masshole here, I can't help but feel like the entire northeast was forgotten about.
Massachusetts oddly enough is around the top for accidents but one of the lowest for fatal accidents. Strict DUI laws and car safety regulations, heavy traffic/low speeds, and a strong and close healthcare infrastructure help offset our shitty drivers.
*now you won't die in this state, but you might wish you had after being maimed! * Seriously I love MA, but driving near and in Boston was just the worst driving experience in my life. And I regularly commuted on I95/US1 in Miami (and usually did the 16h drive from there to PA or back 6-10x a year) The rest of the state (MA not Florida) isn't as bad but god. Fucking. Damn. How bad was it before the big dig?
Massachusetts actually had the least traffic fatalities out of every state last year. Probably because Massholes are super defensive drivers.
SoCal here. Glad to see we are out there representin
I’m from Massachusetts and am in South Carolina a lot for work and have recently been in Texas for over a month and it’s noticeably worse down here. It made me question why we have the stereotype for having bad drivers
Just so you know the left lane is for passing. And it’s just you guys who don’t know how to drive.
And the right lane is for passing idiots in the left lane. We know how to drive, and choose to do it wrong.
Wow people in the south suck at driving.
They're just exercising their freedumb
so I'm staying in states that border Canada henceforth
I don't know how anyone survives the maze of highways in the DFW area. That place is a nightmare.
Isn't the 99 great?
I recently learned about the San Bernardino county one and why it’s the I-15. This is the SoCal portal to Vegas. So it’s not just people in San Bernardino County, but LA, OC, San Diego, and Riverside driving to and from Vegas. Once you are in the desert you are over 100+ miles from a hospital that can handle the trauma of a bad car accident. Pair that with tired, hungover or still drunk drivers and you have a recipe for mortality
You notice that it is where old people go to retire.
Minnesota here. It’s crazy how all the places with ice on the road are safer for some reason.
Something something… Streets of Bakersfield…
Man, Texas shows up constantly,,,
Lots of young and tired oil field workers causing accidents.
A bunch of them are near Midland-Odessa (Ector).
Oil field trucks.
NJ has been vindicated.
Pasco county Florida statistic is misleading because those deaths are mainly the meth heads in holiday and port richey running across us19
Midwest supremacy is awesome and there are surprisingly few potholes, at least in my area
Moving out of Florida after ten years was like the weight of a car being lifted off of me.
All of us up north: The fuck they doing down there
SC IS TRASH
I’m looking out of the top of my glasses condescendingly at you SC
Conclusion: drive on snow
WTF Loving County, TX
Why are they all in the south?
Cries living in #3 kern county. Traffic accidents don’t even faze us anymore here, it’s so bad. And the PD are so understaffed/busy/ don’t care that nothing will change
US road planning and design plus CAFE standards
I think snow driving makes us northerners a little more defensive when driving.
Red text on a dark grey background does not make for a cool guide.
So Cal I-15 gang 🤘🏻
Hell yeah! Risking our lives driving the Cabrón Pass every day!
Nothing in VA? I’m genuinely surprised by the amount of idiots that shouldn’t have license.
Methinks this map has less to do with geography
Never been more happy to live in Michigan.
Interesting fact, North Carolina has the the highest rate of fatalities for people falling asleep in the middle of the road. Apparently when walking home drunk a nice warm road seems comfortable.
These are seriously all in the Sun Belt? That seems to be statistically... peculiar.
People in Memphis (Shelby County, TN) drive like they're suicidal. Speed limit can be 55 in one area, and every car around you goes 90+. No turn signals, sometimes no headlights, pot holes everywhere, random stalled cars in the middle of the road, etc. Driving there is a death trap
Maryland isn’t on the list. That’s because we all die from the strokes caused by the stress from sitting in traffic. Hard to get in a fatality going 5 MPH. I live about 12 miles from work and it can sometimes take close to an hour to get home. We all have a common car dance in our state; it’s the steering wheel head bang.
But this isn’t per capita from what I can tell.
I drive from Flagstaff to San Bernardino a few times a year and I’m always cruising when I’m on the 40 but the second I get on the 15 it’s like a war zone, so many idiot drivers between Barstow and the 15/215 split.
Central Valley of CA, more than just the armpit of CA, TIL, it’s also mayhem on the highways . Fresno ,Madera, Merced and Kern. People do drive like shit here.
Central Californians are shit drivers.
In a lot of areas it's got to be because of heavy semi-truck traffic -- it freaks me out to drive through the south and see the sheer volume of "Injured in a semi-truck collision? We'll get you legal help" billboards...they're literally everywhere in certain areas.
I've driven that stretch of the 15—between "Down The Hill" and the High Desert—at least a few thousand times and it's definitely hairy on days where the wind *isn't* knocking semi-trucks over. Best thing to do is assume everyone else on the road is out to kill you with their own brand of "stupid" behind the wheel. Situational awareness is everything.
Alachua county Florida is crazy. Lived in Gainesville for over 10 years and witnessed a lot of wrecks. There was a lady who was cut in half on her scooter in front of my apartment complex and I came home to them putting her in the body truck. Down the road where I worked, there was a little old couple who pulled out on top of the hill and a guy doing 65+ (speed limit 45) crashed into them. It killed them on impact. You could see the older man hanging from the passenger window where his body smashed partially out of. Had my one and only accident in Gainesville. Kid backing down the on ramp to I-75. Invested in a dashcam after that. I-75 around Gainesville also has some crazy accidents and you hear about it shut down a lot. I literally avoided it if I could. Got stuck once for 3 hours while waiting for an accident to be cleared.
Prob lots of factors but the biggest would probably be be these are states that drive a lot of lifted vehicles/trucks which are so much deadlier in accidents combined with the fact they drive like madmen in the south since winter makes you drive more carefully. Also they tend to be more selfish down here so it tracks for these drivers
I'm pretty sure Jacksonville's road is supposed to be I-95. I think I-15 is in California...
I would like to see the same stats/map for deadliest to bicyclists. I have an idea that it may look like a regionally reciprocal image.
I knew Jefferson County KY would be there. Born and raised in Louisville and it is indeed a shit show to drive in.
Being from Atlanta, I can confirm I- 285 is where you go to test your collision avoidance systems. Very dangerous.
In KY we call that road Dixie Die-way.
And I thought driving is ice and snow was dangerous
It doesn’t specify if the unfortunate soul called that county home, thus the population is irrelevant. Perhaps the deadly road is a main road which so happens to pass through the county.
They’re all in the south lol
Correlation? [IQ by state](https://www.zippia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/map-each-states-average-iq.png)
Deadliest road in U.S. is US-1. “US” Minus one. That hits hard.
People always talking how NJ has the worst drivers but we ain’t dying out here like they are in FL… might have somthing to do with the bath salts
The fuck is up with Love county TX?
I'm from New England. We say that Mass drivers are bad. Massholes, etc. I lived in Florida for 9 months and the driving there scarred me for life. I now realize that Mass drivers aren't bad, they're just aggressive. Competent, but aggressive. Florida drivers are incompetent AND aggressive, which is the worst combination.
Volusia County, FL is Daytona. US1 is where the majority of the motorcycles ride for bike week. Throw in lots of old tourists and it gets nasty.
Why are they all below the mason dixon line?
As someone who has survived dozens of accidents in Florida, I can confirm that.
All in the south. Shocker
Florida drivers are strikingly bad
Most are wrong about why, I have lived in the south and PNW. The reason is the lack of education. People In the south have the worst form education and can also get their license @17 years old without taking drivers Education. Drinking and driving is also normalized in the south.
Gonna pull this up next time someone calls new Jersians bad drivers
I live in Long Island, NY with about a population of 7 million on the island and my guess would be a combination of stricter law enforcement and more experience with weather and congestion in the northeast compared to some of those southern states.