2021 U.S. road conditions by state

Some roads are less traveled for a reason

from Consumer Affairs, Dec 10, 2021 (excerpts)

With the holiday travel season upon us, the ConsumerAffairs Research Team set out to determine which states are the worst (and best) to drive through.

Bad road conditions are more than inconvenient — they can be dangerous and lead to expensive car issues. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), COVID lockdowns did little to decrease road accidents in 2020 and 2021. Traffic-related car crashes actually increased by 4.6% in the first nine months of 2020.

We analyzed government reports and recent email surveys to score states on pavement roughness, road spending per capita and local sentiment. Here are some of our key takeaways from the data:

Rhode Island has the worst roads, followed by Hawaii, Wisconsin and California.
Kansas has the best roads, followed by Alabama, North Dakota and Kentucky.

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2. Hawaii

Hawaii recently received a D-plus on its Infrastructure Report Card. Currently, there are 84 bridges and more than 664 miles of highway in poor condition. The average driver in Hawaii pays $818 each year on costs related to driving on roads in need of repair.

According to residents who took our road conditions survey in 2019, Hawaiian roads are congested, poorly marked and not consistently maintained. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear much progress has been made since.

Why are Hawaiian roads so bad?

About one-third of all Hawaii’s roads are in bad shape, which could be due to a generally underbuilt roadway system. The Aloha State has fewer roadway miles than any other state per capita. In surveys, Hawaii residents who rate their roads poorly gave the following reasons:

Potholes and uneven pavement
Traffic and congestion
Bad lighting and few guardrails

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Methodology: Residents in each state rated their local roads on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being “terrible” and 10 being “excellent.” Weighted averages were combined with the most recent available data from the U.S. Department of Transportation to calculate rankings. Read our full methodology below.

read … Full Report

HNN: Hawaii ranked second worst roads in the nation