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Dangerous roads: the 10 deadliest states to drive in

June 29, 2007

Which states have the most dangerous roads? A study by the National Center for Excellence in Rural Safety (CERS) at the University of Minnesota claims to have the answer, but you probably couldn’t guess the winners even if you tried. You’d pick states with busy roads like New York, Florida, California and Illinois. I did. And I was wrong.

It’s kind of a trick question, actually. A press release issued by the organization claims it’s found the “most dangerous place(s) to travel” over the holidays,” but it focuses on rural roads, where 57 percent of highway deaths occur. I guess they don’t call it the Center of Excellence in Rural safety for nothing.

Still, the list has some value — even though only 2 in 10 Americans live in a rural area. If you’re driving somewhere on vacation, chances are you’ll be on one of these roads this summer.

Here are the 10 states with the highest proportion of their total traffic fatalities occurring on rural roads:

1) Maine (92%)

2) North Dakota (90%)

3) South Dakota (89%)

4) Iowa (88%)

4) Vermont (88%)

5) Montana (86%)

6) Wyoming (84%)

7) South Carolina (83%)

8) Mississippi (82%)

9) Arkansas (81%)

10) West Virginia (80%)

Not to be a contrarian here, but to me this list only conclusively proves one thing: that these states have a lot of rural roads. I’m not sure if you can connect the dots and conclude that Maine’s rural roads are deadlier than, say, Alaska’s or Washington’s.

But here’s something we can both agree on. We need to be talking about traffic fatalities a lot more, whether it’s on a rural road or not. CERS calls it a “public health issue we must take much more seriously,” noting that 23,549 Americans died on rural roadways in 2005.

A good start might be if travel journalists and bloggers would take their attention off the planes for just a few minutes and focus on how most of us get around in this country — by car.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

5 comments

  • Carlo

    I think you have to go one farther and look at emergency response times in rural areas. In places where cities and towns are further apart, and funding for emergency services is usually lacking, I think response time plays a crucial role in the proportion of deaths that happen in largely rural states.

  • Detourz

    Having spent tens of thousands of hours driving around the United States for years I have to agree with Carlo. Response times in extreme rural areas can’t be expected to be good. But let’s be frank here – I have more than once driven across the Dakota’s at night without having seen a single other vehicle. No kidding. How long would it take for someone else to come along and notice I needed help, much less for help to get there. Seriously. Most of Montana and Wyoming are the same. You can drive all night and not see a single other vehicle.

    Not to mention, on many roads in the Dakota’s, Wyoming, and Montana, you can drive off the edge and never be noticed by passing vehicles for days. On most those roads you’d be lucky if someone found you before the buzzards start circling. I am talking about major interstate highways, too. I-80 I-90 I-94

    Also, most of the states on this list are notorious for bad winter weather. Combine blizzard conditions with rural roads, and if you get caught in a blizzard out there it’s often hundreds of miles until you find a safe place to stop. Shelter, food, and fuel, are all far between stops.

  • Barbara Sullivan

    I am really surprised that Mississippi is not #1. My son had an accident, that could have been fatal, on a 4 lane road between Oxford and Tupelo last year. The accident happened around 11:30 in the morning. He was driving a 15 passenger van and pulling a u-haul trailer when he saw rocks, not gravel, in the road. He turned the wheel of the van and missed the rocks with the van, but the trailer ran over the rocks and started fish-tailing. Before he could get the situation under control, the trailer, which had heavy equipment, ran off the road and caused the van to flip 6 times down a ravine. This would never have happened had there been a paved shoulder on the road, or even if the road was not so much higher than the shoulder. Not only is there about a 2 to 3 inch drop from the pavement to the shoulder, but rock, NOT GRAVEL, makes up the shoulder which, apparently, accounts for the rocks on the road. My son was not speeding and did nothing wrong except to drive on that particular road. The patrolman at the scene made the statement that for some reason, they have a lot of this type of accident on that road. I saw a few days ago that the actor, Morgan Freeman, had the same type of accident. Since I live in another state, I do not hear about accidents in Mississippi, but I imagine they are frequent and deadly. Everyone should be aware of the hazardous roads before traveling in Mississippi.

  • Michael Vickery

    I live in Mississippi, and I’ve never seen rocks on the road. Now, I’d say about eighty percent of the roads in this state are rural. The state just got a grant of $2.3 million from the federal government to help improve roads. The main problem with rural roads are poor markings and bad intersections. There are a lot of intersections in this state that you almost don’t know are there until you are almost on top of them. The roads are a lot better now than they were twenty years ago when I started driving. There are still some bad roads, but nowhere near as many as their used to be. It used to be that there were almost no four-lane highways outside of the two interstate highways. These were pretty busy roads that also had a lot of head on collisions on them. There were a lot of roads that were not modern and would have sharp curves and poor drainage as well.

  • Michael

    I live in Wyoming and weather does play a factor for sure I-80 is very deadly in severe weather. Duing the tourist season Wyoming see’s a huge influx in auto fatalities We have Yellowstone which sees over one million tourists a year. Not to mention Sturgis in South Dakota, Wyoming is a major passage for bikers on thier way to this rally. Wyoming also has the highest alcohol related fatalities in the U.S. by more than 2%

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