Feeling frustrated on the roads? Just know that you’re not alone. According to a new research published by Confused.com, an insurance comparison platform based in the UK, Malaysia is apparently ranked the eighth most stressful country to drive a car.
The study, which sourced its data from various international avenues including the World Health Organisation and World Economic Forum, ranked a list of 49 countries according to four factors: the quality of the roads, the number of speed cameras, number of fatal accidents per capita, and the number of cars on the road.
According to the study, you’ll find a speed camera approximately every 996 km of roads travelled, roughly 92 cars per kilometre of road, a road quality infrastructure index of 72.4 out of 100, and just under 23 fatal accidents per 100,000 populations.
Based on the study’s unique weightage between the factors, Malaysia has been given a “stressful driving score” of 72 out of 100, placing us in eighth place in the study. Other countries in the top 10 most stressful places to drive in include:
Top 10 most stressful countries to drive a car in:
- United Arab Emirates (88)
- Bulgaria (80)
- Turkey (78)
- Italy (76)
- Hong Kong (76)
- Czech Republic (74)
- Belgium (72)
- Malaysia (72)
- Brazil (71)
- Argentina (71)
On the other end of the spectrum, Denmark topped the list as the least stressful countries to drive in, with a stressful driving score of just 27.
Top 10 least stressful countries to drive a car in:
- Denmark (27)
- Finland (27)
- Japan (28)
- Spain (28)
- Saudi Arabia (29)
- Australia (29)
- USA (30)
- Sweden (33)
- Hungary (35)
- Slovakia (36)
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The study says that as road quality and deaths per population are likely to cause more stress to drivers than congestion and speed cameras, they’ve given the two factors a 20% and 30% weightage respectively on the total overall score, which could explain why Malaysia is ranked so high up the list.
In terms of individual factors, Malaysia’s scores aren’t too egregious when compared to the other countries on the list. In fact, we have the least amount of speed cameras among the top 10 countries, and actually ranked third best in terms of road quality.
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However, the number of fatal road accidents per capita in our country is slightly on the high side, ranking fourth among the top 10, which could have brought our total average score up a notch.
It’s certainly stressful to drive a car here in Malaysia, but based on our experiences driving in other countries, we really don’t have it too bad. Do you agree with the ranking above? Let us know in the comments below – after you check out the full study, linked here.
