Unexpected City Named Worst For North Carolina Drivers
The worst city for North Carolina drivers? It’s not Charlotte. Or Raleigh. It’s not even in the Triangle or Triad areas. Stumped? You have every right to be. According to 24/7 Wall Street the worst city for North Carolina drivers is Rocky Mount. I haven’t spent a lot of time in Rocky Mount (in fact I’ve only driven through a handful of times. But to say it’s worse for drivers than Charlotte? Or 1-40 in Raleigh at rush hour? I’m listening, but have a hard time believing this to be true.
But that’s what 24/7 Wall Street is reporting. They created a list of the worst cities for drivers in every US State. They report using “metro area level data from a range of sources” to determine the worst city. A quick look at the statistics does give clarity as to why it wasn’t a major city (full of traffic) representing NC on this list. Because traffic in both Charlotte and Raleigh has to be worse. Instead, they used data on crashes, vehicle thefts, and then the average commute time.
Here was the data as reported by 24/Wall Street for Rocky Mount (one of 15 metro areas in the state analyzed for this study):
- Fatal crash rate in 2021: 23.6 per 100,000 people (14.3 per 100,000 in state)
- Total fatal crashes in 2021: 34 (1,535 in state)
- Vehicle theft rate in 2022: 148 per 100,000 people (220 per 100,000 in state)
- Total vehicle thefts reported in 2022: 213 (23,576 in state)
- Avg. commute time in 2022: 24.7 minutes (25.1 minutes in state)
Rocky Mount is approximately 45 miles east of Raleigh near the intersection of I-95 and Highway 64. So while it may not have a large number of permanent residents many many people are passing through daily. This also probably factors into this ranking. You can read the full study from 24/7 Wall Street here.
