Revealed: The world’s most stressful cities to drive in

Driving is a way of life and a necessity in places that don’t offer good public transportation. However, recent research from road safety charity Brake showed that ‘nine in 10 drivers admitted to feeling stressed or angry when behind the wheel’.

A fifth of the world’s population owns a car – that’s an estimated 1.4 billion cars being driven – and this figure is set to increase to 28.8 billion by 2036. While the US and China are responsible for a large proportion of this number, there are populated cities across the world that are known to be particularly tricky to drive around due the high number of vehicles on the roads.

hiyacar – the UK’s fast growing car-sharing platform – has ranked 36 of the world’s most populated cities to uncover the most and the least stressful places to drive. The ranking is based on several factors including; severity of traffic congestion, the amount of vehicles, quality of the roads, road accidents per year and the availability of public transport. They then gave each city an overall score out of 10.

Despite having one of the world’s busiest public transportation systems, Mumbai was ranked as the most stressful city to drive in with a score of 7.4. With 510 cars per kilometer, and over 100,000 people every square kilometer, the roads of India’s largest city are very overcrowded. The city has eight types of public transportation facilities, but the sheer pressure of population density also puts Mumbai in the top spot for the most car accidents.

Paris came in second with a score of 6.4. The city of love and light has over 32 million cars which causes traffic congestion. While the quality of roads is among the best, limited public transport facilities compel locals to get around in their own vehicles.
Lima, Peru’s capital city, is ranked as the least stressful city to drive in. With a score of 2.1, Peruvians had the fewest traffic accidents within the city in the past years.

Coming in just after Lima was one of China’s most populated cities, Dongguan, which is well known for its used car sales.

Here are the five most and five least stressful cities in the world to drive in the world:
Most stressful cities to drive in:

Mumbai, India 7.4
Paris, France 6.4
Jakarta, Indonesia 6.0
Delhi, India 5.9
New York, United States 5.6

Least stressful cities to drive in:

Lima, Peru 2.1
Dongguan, China 2.4
Hangzhou, China 2.6
Tianjin, China 2.6
Bogotá, Columbia 2.7

Co-founder and CEO of hiyacar Graeme Risby said: “Growing population and personal car ownership is only going to exacerbate this issue in cities worldwide, however adopting car sharing in our day to day lives is an effective way to decrease the number of parked cars on our road and hopefully alleviate some of the factors causing stress for drivers.”