Two Colorado Cities Unsurprisingly Land on Worst Places to Drive List

Colorado is a fantastic place, but we all can have our qualms with something we love. Whether it’s transplants, cracking knuckles, or the cost of living, there are plenty of nitpicks people can have about this place.

However, quite possibly, the most common Colorado pet peeve is bad drivers. It has gotten to the point where Colorado now ranks in the top half of states that have the most incidents of road rage.

While it’s never good to get road rage, drivers in Lakewood and Pueblo, Colorado, seem to possibly have the most acceptable reasons to get it. Both of these Colorado cities rank as two of the most perilous places to drive in the United States. According to ConsumerAffairs, these Colorado cities rank within the top 20, meaning people in these cities deal with bad drivers far more than others around the country.

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Let’s take a look at each city to see what makes each place such a dangerous place to drive.

Lakewood, Colorado, Has Some of the Most Fatal Crashes Due to Bad Driving in the Country.

According to ConsumerAffairs, Lakewood, Colorado, ranks as the 18th worst place to drive in America because it has some of the most instances of “bad driving” causing fatal crashes.

ConsumerAffairs categorizes “bad driving” as multiple things, like making improper turns, failing to yield on a right of way, and improper or erratic lane changes, as examples. It also cites driving aggressively, carelessly, and recklessly in this statistic. In this stat, Lakewood has 20.4 bad driving crashes per 100K people, compared to the national average of 5.8. That’s nearly four times higher than what’s typically seen in the U.S.

Pueblo, Colorado, Has a Problem with Drunk Drivers.

While Lakewood certainly has its driving problems, Pueblo is ranked even higher on the list, sneaking in at 10th place. Pueblo combines an ever so slightly higher bad driving caused fatalities statistic, at 20.5, along with a higher score for drunk drivers.

ConsumerAffairs calculated drunk drivers similarly to other statistics, on a per 100K people basis. In this category, Pueblo had a score of 7.1, which is a significant jump from the national average of 4.8.

The One Statistic Where Lakewood and Pueblo are Below the National Average for Bad Driving.

Despite higher scores in other categories, Lakewood actually sits below the national average of 12.9 total car crash fatalities per 100K, sitting at 11.5. Unfortunately, Pueblo is still above it at 14.6 per 100K.

On the other hand, both cities sit below the national average for fatalities due to speeding per 100K, which sits at 3.7. Lakewood has an average of 3.2, and Pueblo sits at 3.6, respectively.

One of Colorado’s Neighbors Has a City With Worse Drivers Than Lakewood and Pueblo.

While Lakewood and Pueblo made the list with total crash scores of 40.2 and 45.4, respectively, Albuquerque, New Mexico, ranks as the 3rd worst place to drive in America. Albuquerque has a crash score of 50.8 and really drops the ball when it comes to their total number of car crash fatalities per 100K and a major speeding issue.

According to the study, the worst city in America to drive in is, by far, Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis has a crash score of 86.6, which doubles both cities and sits well above the national average in all the study’s statistics.

Here are the top five worst places to drive in America, according to ConsumerAffairs:

1. Memphis, Tennessee - Crash Score: 86.6
2. Baton Rouge, Louisiana - Crash Score: 73.8
3. Albuquerque, New Mexico - Crash Score: 50.8
4. Macon, Georgia - Crash Score: 49.1
5. St. Louis, Missouri - Crash Score: 47.4

They also mentioned the top five best places to drive in America based on the lowest crash scores, even though those scores were not provided:

1. Green Bay, Wisconsin
2. Cary, North Carolina
3. Oxnard, California
4. Bellevue, Washington
5. McKinney, Texas