According to recent data from Consumer Affairs, the roads in Florida rank near the tops in the nation. My first thought was that this might be because we don’t get the snow and ice that leads to potholes when the snowplows come. But that’s not it. The top 3 on this list get plenty of snow. And for as much hurricane damage Florida had to deal with, you’d think our roads would suffer. But 7th is not bad at all. So here’s what plays into the numbers.
To determine which states have the worst roads, Consumer Affairs focused on four main factors. Percentage of roads in poor, fair and good condition: We considered the percentage of roads the Federal Highway Administration graded as being in poor, fair and good condition. Motor crash fatalities on roads per mile: The total number of fatal motor vehicle crashes in each state was sourced from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Amount spent per mile of road: We calculated the dollar amount each state spends per mile of road with data obtained from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT): We calculated the percentage of each state’s rural and urban VMT for the given category against the national sum of all states’ VMTs for the given category.
So how do Florida roads stack up?
Quite well, actually. And we saw first hand after the hurricane how fast bridges and roads can be repaired here in our state. That’s why I used the picture from Sanibel at the top. They got that done in one month. Amazing. And states towards the bottom? Well, we’ve documented the exodus from California more than once. Here might be another reason.
- About 46% of survey respondents who rated their roads 1 out of 10 (terrible) were from California.
So here are the 2022 US road conditions by state.