Cities with the Worst Drivers in 2022

Chase Gardner
Written byChase Gardner
Headshot of Chase Gardner
Chase GardnerData Insights Manager
  • Data expert on auto trends and driver behavior

  • University of Chicago graduate with statistics degree

Chase spearheads analytics for Insurify’s data insights team. With his deep expertise in insurance data, Chase is often interviewed on industry trends.

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Tanveen Vohra
Edited byTanveen Vohra
Tanveen Vohra
Tanveen VohraManager of Content and Communications
  • Property and casualty insurance specialist

  • 4+ years creating insurance content

Tanveen manages Insurify's data insights, annual home and auto insurance reports, and media communications. She’s regularly featured in media interviews on insurance topics.

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Headshot of Konstantin Halachev, VP of Engineering at Insurify
Konstantin HalachevVice President of Engineering
  • 7+ years experience in data analysis

  • Ph.D. in Computational Biology

Konstantin has led data teams across multiple industries, including insurance, travel, and biology. He’s led Insurify’s engineering team for more than three years.

Published April 29, 2022 at 12:00 PM PDT

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For anyone wondering if their town’s drivers are actually the worst, this is the definitive list of cities with the most traffic violations in 2022.

Plenty of Americans like to complain that their city has the worst drivers. In fact, doing so is something of a national pastime. After all, grumbling that no one on the road knows how to drive is a relatively harmless way to blow off steam during stressful daily commutes. Recently, drivers have had even more to complain about, as rates of dangerous driving behavior, including speeding, are on the rise across America. Many motorists picked up bad driving habits during the COVID-19 pandemic’s initial shelter-in-place orders, and unfortunately,  have continued those dangerous practices  into 2022.

While not all moving violations are equally hazardous, every infraction — from improper backing to reckless driving — represents some level of neglect for the rules of the road. Curious to see where drivers break traffic laws most often, the data scientists at Insurify turned to their database of over 4.6 million car insurance applications to identify the city in each state with the worst drivers in 2022.

Icon map showing the city with the worst drivers in every state in 2022.

Insights

  • National averages. Across the U.S., 17.2% of drivers have an at-fault violation on record. For context, this is about the same proportion of U.S. men standing 6’2” or taller, or U.S. women standing 5’6” or taller.

  • In top cities, bad driving rates are soaring. Among the worst driving cities in the nation, an average of 20.7% of drivers have a prior at-fault violation. In the top ten worst driving cities in the country, this share rises to a whopping 25.4%, or more than 1 out of every 4 drivers. Drivers in these cities are cited for at-fault traffic violations 48% more often than the national average. Ohio has higher rates of poor driving than any other state; four of the state’s metro areas rank among the nation’s ten worst driving cities. Canton, OH, has the highest traffic infraction rate in the nation.

  • Which city has the best drivers? Bragging rights go to Waterbury, CT, which has the lowest traffic infraction rate of any city in the U.S. Only 10.3% of Waterbury drivers have a prior traffic violation on record, a share that’s 40% lower than the national average. Connecticut has two additional cities, Bridgeport and New Haven, among the ten safest driving cities in the country. Even the state’s worst driving city — Hartford — still has an at-fault infraction rate that’s 21% lower than the national average.

Bar graph depicting the ten cities with the worst drivers in 2022, plus the national average.

Methodology

Researchers at Insurify, a site to compare auto insurance rates, turned to their database of over 4.6 million car insurance applications to identify the U.S. cities with the worst drivers in 2022. For every metropolitan area with at least 50,000 residents — the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of an urban area — Insurify’s data scientists compared the number of drivers with a prior at-fault moving violation on record within the last seven years against the overall driving population. The city in each state with the largest share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record was deemed the worst driving city in its respective state in 2022. For states with data on fewer than two cities with a population greater than 50,000, the two largest cities were considered in this analysis. Due to insufficient metropolitan area data, Alaska, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming were excluded from this analysis.

Population data for each metro area was gathered from the United States Census Bureau.

The findings in this article represent statistical trends found in Insurify’s analysis of over 4.6 million car insurance applications. The findings of this study are not meant to imply the direction nor necessarily the existence of a causal relationship. Rather, this is a presentation of statistical correlations of public interest.

What city has the worst drivers in America?

Canton, OH, has the worst drivers in America in 2022. 28.2% of Canton drivers have a prior at-fault traffic infraction on record, a share that's a whopping 64% higher than the national average.

City in Each State With the Worst Drivers (2022)

Alabama: Tuscaloosa

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.1% (10% greater than state average)

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Arizona: Peoria

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 19.8% (18% greater than state average)

Arkansas: Fayetteville

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 20.7% (20% greater than state average)

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California: Palmdale

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.4% (28% greater than state average)

Colorado: Fort Collins

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 24.1% (13% greater than state average)

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Connecticut: Hartford

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 13.6% (19% greater than state average)

Delaware: Dover

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 18.4% (22% greater than state average)

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Florida: Gainesville

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 20.9% (42% greater than state average)

Georgia: Savannah

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.0% (10% greater than state average)

Hawaii: Honolulu

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 16.3% (5% greater than state average)

Idaho: Boise

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 26.4% (18% greater than state average)

Illinois: Rockford

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.0% (13% greater than state average)

Indiana: Evansville

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 21.8% (10% greater than state average)

Iowa: Des Moines

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 25.6% (19% greater than state average)

Kansas: Wichita

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.0% (8% greater than state average)

Kentucky: Lexington

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.7% (22% greater than state average)

Louisiana: Lafayette

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.0% (13% greater than state average)

Maryland: Silver Spring

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 19.5% (2% greater than state average)

Massachusetts: Worcester

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 19.8% (9% greater than state average)

Michigan: Kalamazoo

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 14.9% (22% greater than state average)

Minnesota: Minneapolis

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.4% (2% greater than state average)

Mississippi: Gulfport

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 15.2% (8% greater than state average)

Missouri: Columbia

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.5% (22% greater than state average)

Nebraska: Lincoln

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 27.8% (21% greater than state average)

Nevada: Sparks

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.8% (36% greater than state average)

New Jersey: Trenton

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 13.8% (12% greater than state average)

New Mexico: Las Cruces

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.7% (26% greater than state average)

New York: Schenectady

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 20.1% (43% greater than state average)

North Carolina: Raleigh

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 20.1% (5% greater than state average)

Ohio: Canton

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 28.2% (14% greater than state average)

Oklahoma: Edmond

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 19.8% (15% greater than state average)

Oregon: Salem

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 23.9% (14% greater than state average)

Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 17.3% (12% greater than state average)

South Carolina: Columbia

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 24.9% (11% greater than state average)

South Dakota: Sioux Falls

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 23.9% (10% greater than state average)

Tennessee: Clarksville

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 21.3% (10% greater than state average)

Texas: San Angelo

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 20.4% (33% greater than state average)

Utah: Provo

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 21.5% (9% greater than state average)

Virginia: Newport News

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 23.9% (7% greater than state average)

Washington: Spokane

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.9% (12% greater than state average)

West Virginia: Charleston

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 15.4% (7% greater than state average)

Wisconsin: Milwaukee

  • Share of drivers with an at-fault violation on record: 22.8% (2% greater than state average)

Sources

Data Attribution

The information, statistics, and data visualizations on this page are free to use, we just ask that you attribute any full or partial use to Insurify with a link to this page. Thank you!

If you have any questions or comments about this article or would like to request the data, please contact insights@insurify.com.

Chase Gardner
Chase GardnerData Insights Manager

Chase Gardner leads data research at Insurify. He informs readers on major developments in the auto and home industries through analysis of driver behavior, homeownership tendencies, cost of living trends, and more. He received a bachelor’s degree with concentrations in Environmental & Urban Studies and Statistics from the University of Chicago. Chase’s work has been cited in CNBC, MSN, Axios, The Street, and dozens of local news outlets across the country.

Tanveen Vohra
Edited byTanveen VohraManager of Content and Communications
Tanveen Vohra
Tanveen VohraManager of Content and Communications
  • Property and casualty insurance specialist

  • 4+ years creating insurance content

Tanveen manages Insurify's data insights, annual home and auto insurance reports, and media communications. She’s regularly featured in media interviews on insurance topics.

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Konstantin Halachev
Reviewed byKonstantin HalachevVice President of Engineering
Headshot of Konstantin Halachev, VP of Engineering at Insurify
Konstantin HalachevVice President of Engineering
  • 7+ years experience in data analysis

  • Ph.D. in Computational Biology

Konstantin has led data teams across multiple industries, including insurance, travel, and biology. He’s led Insurify’s engineering team for more than three years.