The 10 countries with the world’s worst drivers

Traffic is an inevitable part of travel. Angry motor scooters in Rome, pileups in Los Angeles and snarls in Cairo conspire to throw our best-laid plans into chaos. Doug Lansky feels your pain. In his upcoming book The Titanic Awards, a compendium of the world’s worst travel mishaps, he’s compiled the following writeup and list of the top ten worst countries for driving.

When I rented a car in Napoli, the manager at the Hertz office told me “Driving here is like a video game. You just have to relax, stop thinking, and feel it in your stomach.” The traffic signals were especially tricky as the red, yellow and green colored lights were obeyed no more than Christmas decorations. Red lights were run as a matter of decent driving.

It’s not just Naples — travelers across the planet have griped about the quality of driving abroad. According to a survey of over 2000 people from 80 different countries, I wasn’t the only one who found it challenging. The percentages below are the voting results of our survey of the worst drivers in the world. Disagree with these results? Take the new survey at TitanicAwards.com. For more fun survey results and other “Worsts of Travel” tales, check out the book, The Titanic Awards (Perigee, May 4, 2010).

Italy 12.7%


India 9%

China 8.6%

Egypt 6.8%

France 4.2%

Vietnam – 3.7%

Thailand 3.5%

United States 3.4%


Indonesia 2.9%

Mexico 2.2%