California Tops List of Aggressive Drivers

When it comes to aggressive drivers during the stressful holiday season, California, along with Georgia and Texas, tops the list.

It’s no surprise that the holiday season is the most stressful time of the year. With the extra errands and traveling the holidays call for, a lot of that jingle-bell stress is transferred to the roads by the way consumers drive.

In fact, consumers’ driving habits are 175 percent more aggressive during the holidays compared to the rest of the year, according to data compiled by GasBuddy.

GasBuddy examined millions of Drives data in the U.S. during the Thanksgiving holiday week defined as Nov 21 – 25, 2018, noting the frequency of aggressive events while driving: quick accelerating, hard braking, and speeding.

The top 10 states with the most aggressive holiday drivers are: Georgia, California, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.

Complete state rankings can be found here.

The data also revealed that aggressive driving habits occur most during the beginning of the season, with more instances happening during the drive to the holiday destination versus the return from. The actual holiday day — in this case, Thanksgiving — is when it is the calmest behind the wheel, followed by Black Friday.

“As we head into December, motorists shouldn’t let the stress of the season negatively impact the way they drive. Not only is aggressive driving dangerous but it is the quickest way to lower gas mileage by as much as 40 percent,” Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, said in a prepared statement. “The holidays should be the most wonderful time of the year, not the most costly at the pump.”

The findings regarding aggressive driving were compiled using data from GasBuddy’s Drives feature that provides motorists with an assessment of their driving habits during their trip in an effort to improve fuel efficiency, mapping out when and where a poor driving habit occurred.