The holidays can be stressful and that’s before factoring in junior screaming his lungs out, complaining about getting a Nintendo Switch instead of a PS5.
Unsurprisingly, this stress can translate into aggressive driving and a new study from GasBuddy looked to find the cities with the most aggressive holiday drivers.
The study examined 2,613,857 drives in the top 50 most populous metropolitan areas in the United States that occurred between November 24th and 26th. It specifically looked for aggressive driving behaviors such as fast acceleration, speeding, and hard braking.
The city with the most aggressive holiday drivers was Tucson, Arizona where people were speed demons. This helped to give the city the highest total percentage of aggressive driving events at 54%.
Following in a distant second was Jacksonville, Florida which also had a need for speed. However, it had a much lower total percentage of events at 30%.
Rounding out the top five spots were Nashville, Orlando, and Birmingham, Alabama. Three metropolitan areas in Florida made the top ten list – with the Tampa-St. Petersburg area coming in eighth – and GasBuddy deemed the sunshine state home to the most aggressive holiday drivers.
Also: Study Says The Worst Drivers In America Call Wyoming Home
On the flip side, the least aggressive holiday drivers were found in Portland, Cincinnati, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Rochester, New York. In fact, Ohio dominated the ‘best drivers’ list with three cities – including Cleveland and Columbus – cracking into the top ten.
While aggressive driving behavior varied by location, the study found hard braking was the most common overall. It was followed by speeding and rapid acceleration.
GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, noted the “holidays can bring out both the best and worst of us” but pointed out “driving aggressively and rushing around bites into consumer wallets by reducing fuel efficiency.” He went on to explain that “taking a deep breath and slowing down while driving can improve drivers’ gas mileage up to 25%, meaning safe drivers will have extra savings on hand to spend during the holiday season.”