You’ll Never Guess Which State Has The Best Drivers With The Fewest Crashes

If we had 50 guesses to tell you which state in the U.S. plus the District of Columbia has the best drivers with the least accidents, we would not have used one of those guesses to say Michigan. And yet, it’s true! Two studies performed this year by insurance companies who keep records on this sort of thing back up Michigan’s safety record, which to some (like us) seemed unlikely at first glance.

Studies from Lending Tree and Insurify both testify to this fact. The former study looks at traffic incidents between the dates of January 1, 2025 and September 30, 2025 and reveals Michigan has the best drivers with a rate of just 10 incidents per 1,000 drivers. The other study looks at 2023 and 2024 and shows Michigan’s accident rate of just 1.68 percent is the lowest in the country, nearly half as much as the next best state, Mississippi, with 2.86 percent.

What’s Going On Up There In Michigan?

The Lending Tree study looks at a few different statistics that include driving incidents such as accidents, DUIs, speeding, and citations. It then aggregates those numbers to reach scores that crown the states with the best and worst drivers. For accidents alone, Michigan had the best rate with just 10 accidents per 1,000 drivers. It was followed by Colorado with 11.7 crashes and Florida with 11.9. The worst state on the list was New Jersey with an accident rate more than three times worse than Michigan’s at 31.5 per 1,000 drivers.

When it comes to driving under the influence, Michigan is actually 18th worst with 1.6 DUIs per 1,000 drivers. That’s its only poor showing in the study. The most inebriated state is North Dakota with 3.7 DUIs per 1,000 drivers, followed by California with 3.5. North Dakota is also the worst state for speeding infractions with 11.9 incidents per 1,000 drivers, followed by Utah with 9.4. Despite its identity as the car capital of the world, Michigan has only 1.9 speeding citations per 1,000 drivers, which puts it at 40 among the states (higher is better on this list).

Top 10 States With The Best Drivers

When you add these numbers up, Michigan comes out on top as the state with the country’s best drivers, with a score of just 20.9 incidents of any kind per 1,000 drivers. It’s followed by Florida with 23.1 incidents and Colorado with 23.7. Not surprisingly, the state with the worst drivers is North Dakota where 64 incidents happen per 1,000 drivers. It’s followed by New Jersey with 58.8 incidents and Utah with 54.6.

The study by Insurify is a bit simpler, focusing on accident rates as represented by a percentage of total cars operating in each state. It specifically looked at collision data from 2023 and 2024 and found Michigan had the lowest percentage of accidents at just 1.68 percent. Next best was Mississippi at 2.86 percent and then Illinois at 3.02 percent. New England states happened to fair poorly in this study. The top four states where you’re most likely to get into an accident are Massachusetts with a crash rate of 6.07 percent, New Hampshire at 5.81 percent, Rhode Island at 5.63 percent, and Maine at 5.38 percent.

TopSpeed’s Take

Color us surprised, but Michigan is not the first state we think of when it comes to safe driving. Perhaps that’s because most of us have spent time mainly around Detroit where the car culture is most concentrated. We’ve seen Woodward Ave. during the Dream Cruise, we’ve driven 696 and been passed by a hoard of dirt bikes doing wheelies, and we’ve been at Cars and Coffee events where Mustang drivers do something stupid and crash. And yet, here is the data, laid out before us in all its contradictory glory.

Clearly, we need to spend more time driving elsewhere in Michigan. Ann Arbor is nice, they say. Traverse City is beautiful in the fall. And there’s nothing and no one to crash into in the Upper Peninsula. We kid, of course. Michigan is actually one of the best states our union has to offer, especially if you’re a car enthusiast. The fact it has the best drivers, officially now, gives it one more thing to brag about.

Sources: Lending Tree; Insurify