Recent research looks into the safety on the roads of each of the states.
An extensive data analysis is making insurance news after having been performed based on official data from several government agencies and industry organizations to identify the states with the safest and most dangerous highways.
South Carolina was found to have the most dangerous highways in the United States.
Coming in second, though quite distantly, was Florida. The ranking was based on six categories, into which a detailed analysis had been performed. Next, were Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, which, according to the study’s report, indicated that there seemed to be a trend among the southern states for having more hazardous major roads.
The safest roads were also identified, with Idaho topping the list.
Also on that list for the safest highways in the country were Tennessee, Arizona, Kentucky, and then Wyoming. The data used in order to perform the ranking, which was set by CarInsuranceComparison.com, was gleaned from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Federal Highway Administration, in addition to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
The insurance news was based on a ranking set using the following categories:
• Percentage of drivers who do not wear seatbelts
• Interstate speeding facilities established per interstate mile
• Federal funding
• Obsolete or deficient highway bridges
• Number of deaths per 1000 driven highway miles
• Death rates as per the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data.
Each of these criteria were scored out of a possible 50 points, where the higher the score, the more dangerous the highway. Each state’s category scores were totaled in order to assign a final score that would allow it to be ranked among the others states in the country.
Among the findings in the report include:
• Idaho was found to have the safest highways, but is the fifty least populated state, meaning that more road space doesn’t necessarily mean better overall safety.
• The most dangerous state, South Carolina, received a score that was 37 points more dangerous than Florida, the state with the next most hazardous highways.
• Estimates from Federal Highway Administration insurance news show that Americans have traveled an average monthly distance of 234.9 billion miles this year.
