Complaining about the roads and weather have become pastimes for many people in America, but some drivers have a legitimate reason for all the bellyaching. Home Solutions’ recent study focused on road safety, calculating the percentage of rough roads, annual miles driven, and fatal injuries across all 50 states. The rough road numbers won’t be surprising for people who live in the worst states, but they’re eye-opening for everyone else.
Rhode Island had the roughest roads in the country, with 15.3 percent scoring above 220 on the International Roughness Index (IRI), which is a generally accepted measure of road quality in America. The top ten states with the roughest roads include:
- Rhode Island: 15.3 percent of roads
- Massachusetts: 14.6%
- California: 12.4%
- New Jersey: 9.5%
- Hawaii: 9.1%
- New York: 8.9%
- New Mexico: 8.2%
- Maryland: 7.7%
- Wisconsin: 6.6%
- Louisiana: 6.3%
The math behind the IRI calculations is beyond what we’ll get into here, but Rhode Island’s drivers likely don’t need equations to figure out that their state’s roads need some help. That said, many states fell below the one percent mark for rough roads, showing that the issue is largely related to the amount of money and time spent on care and maintenance.
Alabama had the fewest rough roads, at 0.4%, while Wyoming was close behind at 0.6%. Minnesota, Nevada, and Georgia round out the top five, with all coming in below 0.8%. At the same time, Wyoming had the deadliest roads in the study, so it’s not all roses for The Cowboy State.
Wyoming had a whopping 57 road deaths per 100,000 drivers, placing it high atop the list of deadliest states. In comparison, Rhode Island, with its bumpy roads, only saw 8.5 deaths per 100,000. Massachusetts wasn’t much worse, with just 9.5 deaths, though California was significantly higher, at 20.2 deaths per 100,000 drivers.
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