If you’ve ever thought ‘Canada must have the worst drivers,’ you might actually be on to something.
New research from Compare the Market Australia — a company that compares insurance products — states Canada is within the top 10 countries in the world with the worst drivers.
"To compile our list of best and worst countries, we looked at a variety of factors, including blood alcohol allowance limits, the quality of roads, and the number of deaths caused by road traffic,” says company spokesperson Noemi Hadnagy in a statement.
Road quality, speed limit and traffic injury deaths were studied to determine which countries have the worst motorists. Canada came in ninth place.
Thailand has the worst drivers, results show, with a score of 2.17 out of five; close behind are Peru, Lebanon and India.
"Thailand is where you’re most likely to find the worst drivers,” states the report. "The country has the highest number of tragic traffic injury deaths by far, at 32 per 100,000 people."
Canadian motorists are not worse than their American counterparts though.
The United States took spot number seven for the worst drivers around the world with a score of 2.50; tragic traffic injury deaths in the U.S. are 13 per 100,000.
There are several South American countries featured in the bottom 10, including Argentina in 45th place and Brazil in 41st.
"Argentina’s high-speed limit of 130 km/h contributes to drivers being seen as less safe, alongside long commute times, and high levels of CO2 emissions,” states the report.
One unique category is social media sentiment, which is the percentage of social media posts that were positive about driving in the last year. Canadians scored horribly with only 8.44 per cent being positive posts.
"Canada has the second-lowest levels of positive social media sentiment regarding driving at 8.44% — behind Denmark only,” says Hadnagy.
The world’s best drivers can be found in Japan.
“Blood alcohol limit levels are quite low, at 0.03 g/dl, similar to the likes of Chile, and the Czech Republic, and it has the highest positive sentiment on social media for driving-related terms, at 33.4 per cent,” says Hadnagy.
"Not only that, but Japan also has the fourth-highest road quality levels on our list, meaning that overall, it’s a very safe country to not only drive in but also to be a pedestrian."
All of the data is up to date as of Jan. 23, 2023. The full study can be found on the Compare the Market website.
