Even if you’re not commuting anymore, odds are you probably spend more time in your car than you realize. WalletHub.com found that drivers spent an average of 99 hours a year behind the wheel, and the site also discovered some major differences between all 50 states that made some commutes easier and others more stressful.
The best states for driving
The site says that Texas is the best state for driving, thanks in part to the southwestern state’s sunny climate, cheap gas, and even its large number of carwashes. At the opposite end of the spectrum, drivers in Hawaii were most likely to be miserable. After all, Hawaii might be known for its endless beaches, but it’s also very rainy, what few roads are on the islands tend to be backed up, fuel is expensive, and even car theft is high — just where those thieves take their cars is anyone’s guess, though.
Texas: where gas is cheap, and carwashes are plentiful.
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Rounding out the best five states for driving are Indiana (cheap car ownership), North Carolina (much the same, plus lots of repair shops), Iowa (very little traffic) and Tennessee (the cheapest state surveyed when it came to car ownership).
The worst states for driving
The bottom of the pile was of course anchored by Hawaii, followed by California (great weather, but oh, so much traffic,) Washington state (expensive gas and lots of construction), Maryland (traffic for days), and Delaware (few convenient repair shops).
See: The 25 most fuel-efficient SUVs of 2021
A few additional interesting findings included a surprisingly high number of carwashes in New Jersey (fourth place) and few in Hawaii (49th place), unusually expensive fuel in Nevada (46th place), and high car theft rates in New Mexico (50th place) and Colorado (49th place).
This story originally ran on Autotrader.com.