Drew Dixon
Driving in the Sunshine Sate can be an adventure, as any Floridian can attest. The roadways can go from open vistas in rural areas to traffic jams in the urban core of virtually every big city. When it comes to towns with the best and worst drivers, LendingTree, a financial services company, has come up with a list of the towns with the best drivers, and the worst.
LendingTree’s analysis found the state’s worst drivers in Miami Gardens. The second worst roam the roads of the state capital, in Tallahassee.
The LendingTree analysis looked at factors such as the number of auto incidents per 1,000 residents in a city per year and the annual cost of car insurance between October 2023 to October 2024 to establish its ranking.
“Miami Gardens has the most driving incidents and the worst drivers in Florida. About 23 incidents occur per 1,000 drivers in Miami Gardens. Miami Gardens also has above-average car insurance rates at $4,401 a year,” the study concluded
But on nearly the opposite geographic end of the state, Tallahassee, with all its lawmakers and government employees in the capital city, came in a close second to Miami Gardens, with 20 vehicle incidents per 1,000 people in a year.
Miramar ranked third among cities with the worst drivers. Jacksonville came in fourth, followed by Cape Coral closing out the bottom five.
The best drivers, meanwhile, can be found in Davie, near Fort Lauderdale, and Coral Springs, near Fort Lauderdale.
“Davie and Coral Springs have the best drivers in Florida based on driving incident rates between October 2023 and October 2024. There were about eight driving incidents per 1,000 drivers in both of these cities during that time,” the analysis concluded.
While road incidents may be lower than other cities in those two towns, vehicle insurance is still pretty costly in the South Florida suburbs. Average auto insurance prices run higher than the state average of $3,267 in both Davie and Coral Springs.
Pembroke Pines was ranked third among best drivers followed by Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in fourth and fifth respectively.
