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Ram, Tesla and Subaru Have the Worst Drivers, While BMW Drivers Have the Highest DUI Rates

https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/

Excerpt:

t’s no secret that drivers of certain car brands have bad reputations — but are these bad reputations warranted? According to the data, it may be in some cases.

Our latest analysis uses QuoteWizard by LendingTree insurance quote data to determine which car brands have the worst drivers. We’ll also break down which brands have the drivers most responsible for accidents, DUIs and other incidents.

Key findings

Across 30 car brands analyzed, Ram has the worst drivers. Nationally, Ram drivers had 32.90 driving incidents (accidents, DUIs, speeding and citations) per 1,000 drivers from Nov. 14, 2022, through Nov. 14, 2023. Tesla (31.13) and Subaru (30.09) were the only other brands whose drivers had incident rates above 30.00.

Mercury has the best drivers in the year analyzed. Mercury drivers had 15.82 incidents per 1,000 drivers nationally — less than half the rate of incidents among Ram drivers. Pontiac (16.24) and Saturn (16.84) followed.

Looking closer, Ram has the worst drivers in 23 states. That means Ram drivers had the highest incident rates of any brand analyzed in nearly half of all U.S. states. Of the states where Ram dominated, drivers were worst in Massachusetts at 64.44 incidents per 1,000 drivers.
Meanwhile, Tesla drivers were the worst in 11 states — the only other brand in the double digits.

Tesla drivers have the highest accident rate. From Nov. 14, 2022, through Nov. 14, 2023, Tesla drivers had 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Ram (22.76) and Subaru (20.90) were the only other brands with more than 20.00 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Meanwhile, Pontiac (8.41), Mercury (8.96) and Saturn (9.13) were the only brands with fewer than 10.00 accidents per 1,000 drivers.

BMW drivers have the highest DUI rate by a wide margin. BMW drivers had 3.13 DUIs per 1,000 drivers — nearly twice the rate of DUIs among Ram drivers (1.72), the next-highest ranking auto brand. On the other end, Mitsubishi (0.89), Volvo (0.92), and Mercury and Kia drivers (both 0.93) had the lowest DUI rates. Just nine of the 30 brands analyzed had DUI rates below 1.00 among their drivers.

10 CAR BRANDS with the most driving incidents per 1,000 drivers:

1 RAM
2 TESLA
3 SUBARU
4 VOLKSWAGEN
5 MAZDA
6 BMW
7 LEXUS
8 INFINITI
9 HYUNDAI
10 TOYOTA

.....For our study, driving incidents included:

Accidents
DUIs
Speeding
Citations