Houston Kart: Why Are Houston Drivers So Bad

Houston is known for many things – and having unsavoury drivers is one of them. I’ve had several experiences wherein I thought I might get into a street fight!  

After all, Houston is still one of Texas’ biggest cities – cars and drivers are everywhere! So with that much traffic going on, you’re bound to run into some conflict at some point.

Thus, read on as we give you some reasons why Houston’s drivers are infamously famous for being the worst – not just in Texas, but in the entirety of the United States, too!

Why are Houston drivers so bad?

Houston drivers are bad because there are plenty of undisciplined and reckless drivers. The road quality could also use improvement, along with commute times and more persistent law enforcement to make Houston’s roads more undrivable. 

Dangerous Drivers

Houston has had a problem with dangerous drivers for a while, but recent studies have shown that things may have worsened, especially after the pandemic.

Houston also has a recurring problem with road rage as well, with a study showing a 135% increase in recorded road rage shooting cases from 2016 to 2023, with 2020 recording the highest cases of road rage shootings.

The number of drunk drivers also makes Houston roads unsafe. Research from Zehls & Associates has shown that Houston has seen 3,553 drunk driving incidents, with 160 of them being fatal and 257 resulting in serious injuries for those involved.

Poor Quality Roads

With 28.2% of Houston’s roads being classified as being in poor condition and by far surpassing the United States’ national average of 26.4%, poor road conditions also play into why Houston drivers are so bad.

Poor road quality means drivers will have to pay more attention to the road – and an unskilled driver running into bad roads is a recipe for disaster. Driving into potholes and uneven road surfaces may cause skidding – and more lethal accidents in some cases.

Houston’s I-45 Freeway was also ranked as the second-deadliest highway, with reports showing that it has seen 56.5 incidents per 100 miles. This puts Houston’s I-45 on the same tier as Bolivia’s Death Road – a road with a 2,000 ft. drop.

Houston’s poor roads have been a problem for a long time – to the point where the people vying for the role of Mayor have promised to fix the problem. The city moves fast to fix the problem, but it lies more with the road quality itself.

Potholes are caused by a combination of poor asphalt quality and poor maintenance – and combining those two with the sheer number of cars maneuvering Houston’s roads would equate to poorer road quality.

Long Commute Time

With an average commute time of 26.1 minutes, Houstonians constantly face long rush hours, which puts Houston at the same level as Dallas. 5.8% of Houstonians also face severe traffic as they face a longer, 60-minute commute compared to the average.

The long commute time can be chalked mostly to the vast majority of Houstonians commuting to work during rush hour. A 2023 study has shown that Houston has 1.75 million workers over the age of 16 with only 4.6% of households lacking access to cars.

The sheer number of Houstonians with cars means more people who have no idea how to drive – which is why Houston drivers are so bad compared to drivers from other states. 

Over the years though, Houston has been working on ways to relieve the long commute times by updating their infrastructure, which has helped alleviate the problem little by little. But it will take some time before it finishes as the project started just last year.

Lack of Law Enforcement

As of 2019, Texas has outlawed the use of red light camera enforcement to help monitor their motorists – and yes, Houston is included on the list. This is done as a step to “protect drivers’ constitutional rights and might reduce traffic accidents.

Houston also has fewer police officers per 1000 people when compared to other larger metropolitans like Los Angeles and Boston, which gives all the Houstonians with terrible driving skills more leeway and wreaks havoc on the streets.

Houston police can still monitor their speeding residents, though the methods that they use aren’t as efficient as compared to the red light cameras. They still use Radar Guns – and combine that with the lack of police officers means lots of bad drivers can get away.

Combine that with Houston drivers being so universally bad, and you’ll have a recipe for disaster – in fact, Texas had the most amount of fatal car crashes and deaths in 2021, which gives them 16.2 deaths per 100,000 of their population.

Houston has implemented a new speed limit on their roads as of the time of writing, and has since yielded mixed results as there is a consistent growth of parking tickets issued within the last year since it’s been implemented – around 4000 tickets, to be precise

Lots of Cars 

Houston ranks 9th in metro cities with the most car ownerships with 94.8% of households owning at least one or two cars. The sheer amount of cars means more traffic – and more traffic will also mean more bad drivers polluting the road.

The aforementioned long commuting hours are a result of Houston’s freeways being one of the most congested roads in the state, with Uptown’s 610 West Loop Freeway from the I-10 taking the title of being the most congested in the entirety of Texas.

Though the levels have gone up significantly after the lockdowns have been lifted, they still have not reached the same levels during the pre-pandemic times when losses have reached $5.7 billion in 2019 due to traffic alone.

Houston’s city government is slowly finding their traction on finding a middle ground between road expansion and lessening of the overall car traffic, but it’s still on the talks as of the time of writing, and a concrete decision has not yet been made.