Florida Drivers Have A Lot Of Room For Improvement

A new study published by GMAC Insurance that included Florida drivers indicates that 20% of all of the drivers on the road today could not pass a standard, written driver’s test.  This means some 41 million drivers.  Test results this year show that fewer drivers know traffic signs than knew them last year.

Drivers from Idaho and Wisconsin did best on the tests, while drivers from New York did the worst.  Florida’s drivers ranked 43rd.

Tested drivers seemed to have the most difficult time with signs and safe following distances.  Older drivers tended to better on the tests, than younger drivers, and men seemed to do better on the tests than women.

As an Orlando car accident attorney who has had an opportunity to take hundreds of depositions of at-fault drivers in car accident cases over the last 17 years, I can tell you that these results are not very surprising to me.  Florida has several factors that seem to go hand-in-hand with problem drivers.  We have a more transient population than most states.  Many people are new to the area, and therefore unfamiliar with the roads.  Rapid growth in Florida has lead to poorly planned and congested roads.  As a state, we clearly need to do a better job of educating and training our drivers.