Oklahoma in list of of top 10 states with the worst drivers

A recent survey ranked Oklahoma third in a list of states with the worst drivers.

By Jon Watje
Staff Writer

There are bad drivers everywhere.

But there are more in some states than others.

SmartAsset.com, a financial tech firm that offers interactive tools for home buying, insurance and investment, completed a survey of the states with the worst drivers, and the Sooner State was near the top of the list when it was completed.

The firm ranked Oklahoma’s drivers the third worst in its top 10 list, only behind Florida as the worst and Mississippi as the second worst.

“It is common occurrence on American highways for near-accidents to occur,” said Derek Miller of SmartAsset.com. “It is also a common occurrence on American highways for people in near-accidents, to look at the license plate of the near-accident-causer and think to themselves, ‘Oh, well of course they’re from some other state.’ It seems like almost every state has a reputation for having terrible drivers. Thanks to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, we can confirm some of those myths and dispel others.”

To find the states with the worst drivers, SmartAsset.com looked at the number of drivers , DUI arrests, people killed, google trends in speeding tickets and percentage of people who have auto insurance.

According to the study, Oklahoma had the lowest percentage of insured drivers.

“Only 74 percent of drivers in Oklahoma are insured,” Miller said. “It does not get much better for the state in the other categories we looked at.”

The study showed that Oklahoma had one of the 15 worst scores in DUIs per thousand drivers (7.74), number of people killed per thousand drivers in vehicular incidents (.21) and rate of googling parking and traffic tickets (52.13).

The state of Maine was found to be the best state in the survey.