Study: S.C. Among States with Worst Drivers

SEATTLE - South Carolina drivers are on Santa's naughty list of worst drivers in the United States. 

With holiday travel season officially here, QuoteWizard (quotewizard.com), an online insurance comparison marketplace, is releasing a new proprietary study ranking the best and worst driving states in the nation. 

Following QuoteWizard's 2016 best and worst drivers by state and city studies, this year's study provides updated rankings on all 50 states.  

From worst to best, here are the rankings of all 50 states: Among its findings, QuoteWizard found that these are the nation’s five worst driving states for 2017:

•        California
•        Minnesota
•        Utah
•        South Carolina
•        Washington

On the other hand, these are the five best driving states for 2017:

•        Rhode Island
•        Florida
•        Mississippi
•        Michigan
•        Arkansas

In addition to ranking all 50 states, the study also addresses a possible discrepancy in driving skills along political lines.

“If you’ve ever been cut off by someone with an out-of-state plate and thought, ‘Oh, it figures,’ this study may be for you,” said Adam Johnson, QuoteWizard content manager. “QuoteWizard analyzed millions of datapoints on drivers from throughout the US and what we found provides a pretty interesting and sometimes surprising snapshot of the best and worst drivers in America.”

Methodology

QuoteWizard sampled incident data (with more than two million data points) from drivers who used its services and linearly extrapolated it to Federal Highway Administration fatality data. To quantify overall driver standards for comparison, QuoteWizard then weighted various incident counts for each state with its frequency. The final rankings are a sum of weighted means which is calculated from total accidents, speeding tickets, DUI, citations and fatalities.