This State Has The Fastest Drivers In All Of America

If you're a fan of all things math and statistics, you'll surely agree that the United States is an absolute treasure trove of information. There are fifty states ripe for being ranked by all sorts of parameters, and some particularly interesting ones for drivers. We have the answer to the most expensive states to own a car, for instance, as well as the state Consumer Affairs deemed the one with the most road rage. Another fascinating one to consider is which state of the Union has the fastest drivers.

Money Supermarket sifted through Google Maps' Routes API information and, per the outlet, "tracked the average driving time for a long-distance route between a country's major cities, at multiple times of the day across different days of the week." In America, the conclusion was that motorists travel at a national average of 68.1 mph, but, of course, this varied a lot between states. The fastest drivers in the U.S., it seems, are Wyomingites, with vehicles in the Equality State powering along at an average of 71.8 mph. 

This narrowly beats out the likes of New Mexico (71 mph), Idaho (70.5 mph), and South Dakota (70.4 mph). Bringing down that average on the other end of the scale were states such as Maryland (54.7 mph), Vermont (52.8 mph), and, slowest of all, New Hampshire at 49.9 mph. This is a significant difference, with almost 22 mph separating the fastest and slowest averages. Several factors contribute to this stark disparity in speed among American drivers.

The United States is one of the biggest countries in the world by sheer area, behind only Russia and Canada. The incredible size of the country, which covers almost 3.8 million square miles, means that there is naturally an enormous variation between one state and the next. 

Some are dominated by big, busy cities, while others are largely rural and offer dramatic landscapes and beautiful open spaces. It follows logically, then, that the busier and more built-up a state's cities, the lower driving speeds would tend to be there. As any New Yorker will surely tell you, for instance, busy roads are all but an inevitability: In January 2018, in fact, the Los Angeles Times shared a headline that proclaimed, "the average speed of traffic in Midtown Manhattan is 4.7 mph."

Fast forward to 2025, and Money Supermarket's analysis reveals that New York state drivers have an average speed of 58.7 mph, almost 10 mph lower than the national average. Manhattan's rush hour, and that of other similarly congested cities, surely has an impact on these figures. On the flipside, those U.S. states with higher speed limits and/or a lot of open highway to contrast the big city gridlock will be able to hit higher speeds more consistently.