This is the best city for driving in Alabama. No, really.
This is the best city for driving in Alabama. No, really.
The best place to drive in the U.S. – factoring in such things as cost of ownership, traffic, infrastructure, and safety – is Raleigh, North Carolina.
That’s according to a recent analysis by Wallethub that compared the 100 largest cities in the U.S. across 30 key indicators. You can see the complete methodology here.
Raleigh was tops, followed by Plano, Texas; Corpus Christi, Texas; Greensboro, North Carolina; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Lincoln, Nebraska; Jacksonville, Florida; Arlington, Texas; Garland, Texas; and Orlando, Florida.
Alabama’s highest-ranking entry came in at number 30. Birmingham was the state’s best place to drive, falling just behind Nashville and ahead of Durham, North Carolina. Birmingham ranked first out of all cities for traffic and infrastructure but fell to 97th for safety.
The traffic and infrastructure category included things like annual hours spent in congestion per auto, number of days with precipitation or cold weather, average commute time, quality of roads and bridges and Waze driver satisfaction rating.
Safety included things such as the likelihood of having an accident, traffic fatality rate, share of adults who wear seatbelts, percentage of uninsured motorists and strictness of punishments for DUIs.
According to the rankings, the worst cities to drive in are Philadelphia, Detroit, Oakland, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Seattle and Los Angeles.