Louisville Ranks First in Recent Best/Worst Drivers Report

Look at those find driving skills. Photo by Jessica Erin Higgins

From a complete disregard for turn signals to people turning left from the right lane to going ridiculous speeds in residential neighborhoods, Louisville drivers seem — at least to me — to have quite a few bad habits. Well, it must really be bad elsewhere, because Louisville ranked first in a study published this month studying the Best and Worst Drivers by City, conducted by Lending Tree.

To put it more succinctly, Lending Tree starts out its report, in part, with this quote: “Every city may think they have the worst drivers in the country, but our annual report identifies the ones that actually do.”

Fair enough.

The online loan provider analyzed 6 million car insurance quotes from drivers in America’s 70 largest cities to get the results. Cities were then evaluated on four factors to determine overall driver quality. The criteria studied included speeding tickets, general citations such as running red lights or using cellphones while driving, accidents and DUIs. Cities with the most dangerous driving incidents are rated among the worst, while cities with the fewest dangerous driving incidents are rated as the best.

Of the 11 worst cited in the report’s brief, a whopping EIGHT of them were in California, from Bakersfield (worst) to L.A. to San Francisco. In other words, if you go to California, consider taking the bus.

Louisville was outright best on only one of the four categories, but was steadily consistent with its ratings across the board, earning it the top slot, just ahead of Hartford, Conn., Little Rock, Ark., and Oklahoma City.

Lending Tree wrote, “Louisville has the best drivers in the nation, and it’s easy to see why. The Kentucky city has the lowest number of citations, and fewer citations generally means a city will do well in every category. Louisville also has a low number of accidents, DUIs and speeding tickets. Louisville drivers seem to be getting better too — the city was sixth in 2021.”

Louisville, give yourself a hand. But for god’s sake, use your turn signals more often, because it’s getting sort of ridiculous.