Study Names Alexandria Drivers Among Rudest In U.S.

ALEXANDRIA, VA — We all have our opinions about drivers on local roads. With high traffic volumes and plenty of major roadways, there's no escaping the rude habits of drivers in the DC region. But according to a new study, Alexandria drivers are some of the rudest in the nation's cities.

Insurify, an insurance quotes comparison website, calculated the cities with the rudest drivers in the U.S. based on a database of more than 2.5 million insurance applications. These applications show the driver's location and driving history, including violations. For this study, data scientists at Insurify classified certain driving violations as the top forms of rude driving: failure to yield violations (failure to yield the right of way, failure to yield to a pedestrian), failure to stop violations (failure to stop for a red light, school bus, or stop sign), improper backing, passing where prohibited, tailgating, street racing, and hit-and-runs.

The data scientists then calculated cities' share of drivers with one or more of these violations on their record. Cities with the highest proportion of these drivers were ranked as the places with the rudest drivers. For the purpose of this study, cities had to be classified as an urbanized area by the U.S. Census Bureau and have a population over 50,000.

Alexandria ranked third for having an estimated share of 52.8 drivers out of 1,000 cited for rude driving behaviors. By comparison, the national average was 23.1 out of 1,000 drivers cited for one or more infractions categorized as rude.

Virginia led U.S. states with nine out of 20 cities on the list. Portsmouth ranked fourth, Roanoke fifth, Woodbridge sixth, Ashburn 10th, Hampton 12th, Richmond 16th, Newport News 17th, and Virginia Beach 19th.

The study determined the most common violations classified as rude driving behaviors were failure to stop for a red light and failure to stop for a stop sign. The least common violation was street racing.

The "politest" cities with the lowest share of citations for rude driving behaviors were Wellington, Florida; McAllen, Texas; and Louisville, Kentucky.

See the full ranking and methodology from Insurify.