The United States Offers A Good Driving Experience

Google’s Waze dubs the United States one of the top countries in the world to drive in

With the United States receiving a solid D+ on an infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers, you’d think that the country’s drivers wouldn’t have a good time driving around. According to traffic navigation app Waze’s data, however, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Now owned by Google, Waze released a series of infographics that were the results of Waze analyzing the driving experiences of 50 million users in 32 countries and 167 metro areas, with users giving scores between miserable (1) and satisfying (10). Interestingly, the infographics revealed that the Netherlands, one of the most densely-populated areas in the world, offers the best driving experience and the lightest traffic in the world, coming in with ratings of 7.9 and 8, respectively.

The United States, meanwhile, wasn’t too far behind in both metrics, with the country ranking third and fifth in best driving experience and lightest traffic, respectively.

As for the worst, Central and South American countries dominated the bottom of both lists, with six countries from the two regions scoring particularly poorly. Waze attributes these poor ratings to “frequency and severity of traffic jams, lack of driver services, and poor road infrastructure.”

Looked at with a bit higher magnification, the United States has five of its cities in the top 10 when it comes to best cities for drivers around the world: Phoenix (#1), Greensboro (#2), Dallas (#3), Detroit (#5), and Cleveland (#7). Meanwhile, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago all managed to stay under 40 minutes for an average commute between home and the office.

Of course, this doesn’t absolve the United States of the need to make sure its infrastructure remains solid. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the country would need almost four trillion dollars in order to bring everything up to snuff by 2020. Meanwhile, back in January, Democratic presidential hopeful and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has at least proposed trillion-dollar legislation that would fix a good chunk of the infrastructure woes the U.S. currently faces, which should allow that good driving experience to continue.

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