People seem to think that Idaho has too many crashes. So, let’s put it to the test against an east coast city. According to the math, which city has the worst drivers. 

For this comparison, Eagle, Idaho and Rockville, Maryland have similar populations, so it stands to reason they can compare against each other. According to each city’s respective police forces, per capita according to 2023 crash data, Eagle had 27, 679 crashes. Rockville had a total of 110,401 crashes.  

Doing some simple calculations, using data on the fatal crashes, Rockville has a fatal crash rate of .5% of all crashes being fatal. While in Idaho is .8% of all crashes are fatal. Of course, on raw data alone, it seems that Rockville has worse drivers with a higher number of crashes, while Eagle has drivers that are more likely to get into a fatal crash.  

Now, of course, no one can say that one city is better or worse than the other. There’s a lot of factors that go into how or why someone would crash, such as weather, traffic volume, time of day, how rural the state is and wildlife. Maryland is much more populated, and is only 34 minutes away from Washington DC, one of the most populus U.S. cities outside of major hubs like New York and San Francisco. Idaho has much more rural highways with higher speed limits, which could possibly contribute to the increased severity of crashes.   

There are many things that drivers can do to avoid deadly crashes. First and foremost would be to make sure everything in the car is running smoothly and that all safety features are up to date.