Road rage is no fun for any of the parties involved, and it can veer into dangerous situations. People often underestimate the risks they’re taking when darting through traffic or aggressively tailgating another driver — the consequences can be deadly. Car subscription service Finn recently compiled data from AAA, the IIHS, and others to determine the states where road rage is the worst and the places with the highest concentration of deadly accidents, finding that some of the nation’s most sparsely populated states are among the most dangerous for drivers.
While Arizona was Finn’s “top pick” as the worst state for road rage, Montana took the top spot for the most fatal car accidents per capita. South Carolina and Wyoming were second and third, respectively. Finn noted that Montana saw a 16 percent increase in deadly crashes in 2021, with just over half attributed to impaired driving. An alarming 39 percent of the state’s fatal crashes were caused by speeding. And that’s in a big state where the posted limits are quite high.
That said, looking at the number of deaths involved with those crashes shows that Mississippi is the deadliest state. It had 697 fatal accidents in 2021 that caused 772 deaths, followed by South Carolina, which had 1,198 deaths from 1,112 accidents, slightly lower per capita than Mississippi. Most of Mississippi’s deaths were due to single-vehicle crashes, and most occurred in rural areas of the state.
If all of that sounds frightening, the good news is that there are several states where road rage is somewhat of a nonissue. Minnesota, Hawaii, and New Hampshire were the three best states to avoid road rage in 2021, while Massachusetts – the state known for people yelling at each other in the streets – came in fourth. Even if you live in a road rage-heavy state, avoiding confrontation and remaining calm are great ways to stay out of trouble.
