No Way: Study Claims Michigan Has the Best Drivers in America

I've lived in and visited a lot of different places in my 30 years and I'll say that there is no place void of bad drivers. No matter what road you may find yourself on across this nation, there's a bad driver somewhere sharing the asphalt with you.

I've certainly been in places with worse drivers than you'll find in Michigan, but it's not as though Michigan is filled with particularly great drivers either. Rain, snow or shine, folks take to the roads in Michigan and seem to find ways to make everyone else's commute a nightmare.

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But, maybe drivers in Michigan aren't quite as bad as you might think.

According to a study from LendingTree via Reader's Digest, Michigan is actually home to the best drivers in the country.

LendingTree's study took a close look at millions of insurance inquiries from November 2023 through November 2024, taking the approach that unsafe behaviors, such as speeding and driving impaired, lead to accidents. Drivers who have poor driving behaviors often are involved in accidents, and therefore make for bad drivers.

According to LendingTree's data, there were 15.3 incidents per 1,000 drivers, the lowest ratio in the nation just below Vermont (15.5), Kentucky (15.8) and Oklahoma (15.9). Naturally, this is a curious result because Michigan is more densely populated than Kentucky and Oklahoma and because, rationally, it'd be reasonable to expect that Detroit alone could perform worse than the entire state of Vermont.

Of course, there could be a few factors aiding Michigan's appearance in the study. For instance, Michigan drivers are among the least likely to be issued a speeding ticket. Michigan is also a leader among uninsured drivers. Those two factors alone could boost Michigan's data to make it seem as though our drivers are safer than they really are.

After all, anyone who has driven on I-94 near Detroit - or just through Detroit in general - knows that Michigan drivers can be quite reckless.