In news that shocks absolutely no one of driving age in South Florida, I-95 in Miami was just named the most stressful highway in the U.S. We owe the dubious distinction to findings from a study FleetLogging conducted in January of this year. The company examines data collected by electronic devices attached to motor vehicles, so we trust they know a thing or two about stuff that happens on the road.
For its research, FleetLogging analyzed 60,000 tweets containing the word ’traffic’ to identify the most stressful driving cities in the U.S. and the U.K., and, hopefully, help folks avoid them altogether. Unfortunately for us, there’s no escaping the worst road in America unless we decide to never commute north or south ever again. About 87-percent of stress-related tweets examined were fired off from somewhere on I-95. Is anyone surprised though? The express lanes are expensive and often crowded, and the highway itself is a series of bottlenecks and sudden merges that would make anyone’s pulse race. Like one angry driver tweeted, “one crash completely paralyzes traffic.”
On the bright side, the most stressful road in the U.K., the A12 between London and Lowestoft, beat us with nearly 93-percent of stressful tweets. Perhaps the Brits are just more vocal about their traffic grievances or their stretch of highway really is worse than ours. Either way, might we suggest keeping both hands on the wheel while you drive? Tweeting while driving isn’t helping anyone, and it’s certainly not improving traffic.