Is South Dakota, Iowa, or Minnesota Home to the Best Roads in America?

If you spend any quality time on the highways and byways of the Tri-State Area (South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota) you have driven on some of the top roads in the country and not even realized it.

ConsumerAffairs, using data from the Federal Highway Administration, looked at three key areas to determine which states had the Best and Worst Roads in America (2024):

• Car accident fatalities per million miles driven
• Road surface roughness percentage
• Percentage of spend per state on road improvements

After crunching the numbers, they determined that the roads in Minnesota were the gold standard from coast to coast.

The North Star State has the second-lowest rate of fatalities per mile driven and has some of the best road surface roughness ratings (Urban: 5%, Rural: 3%) in the nation.

STATES WITH THE BEST ROADS

1. Minnesota
2. Alabama
3. Indiana
4. New Hampshire
5. Vermont
6. Florida
7. Idaho
8. Georgia
9. Utah
10. Tennessee

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As for the rest of the Tri-State Area, roads in Iowa and South Dakota both landed in the top half of the rankings nationally.

The Hawkeye State is 16th overall with 1.13 fatalities per 100 million miles driven and $2.6 billion spent yearly on improvements.

The Mount Rushmore State is 25th with 1.45 fatalities per 100 million miles driven and more than $971 million spent yearly on improvements.

The nation's smallest state has the biggest headaches when it comes to their roads.

Rhode Island has the worst roads in America, with more than 40 percent of urban thoroughfares considered to be in poor condition.

STATES WITH THE WORST ROADS

1. Rhode Island
2. Hawaii
3. California
4. Louisiana
5. Wisconsin
6. New York
7. Massachusetts
8. Nebraska
9. Arkansas
10. Illinois

Across the country, drivers gave their roads an average score of 7 out of 10.