Malaysian Drivers A Very Unhappy Lot

Malaysian drivers rank among the least satisfied groups of road users in the world, says Waze.

According to Waze’s inaugural Driver Satisfaction Index, Malaysia ranks behind Brazil but ahead of Russia. The world’s least satisfied drivers are those from El Salvador, while Dutch drivers are most satisfied.

The Waze Driver Satisfaction Index is based on six key factors:

• Traffic Level by frequency and severity of traffic jams
• Road quality and infrastructure
• Driver safety based on accidents, road hazards and weather
• Driver services like access to gas stations and easy parking
• Socio-Economic (data sourced from World Bank) including access to cars and impact of gas prices

Of course, this is merely a subjective score, collated based on user generated traffic reports from Waze users around the world.

You know that you can’t take the rankings very seriously because Japan, which has one of the best town planning and public transportation system, and has among the safest and smoothest roads in the world, ranks even lower than Malaysia and Russia. Viewed it another way, Japan is a very congested city and its drivers are very demanding lot.

Malaysia also ranks poorly in safety index, collated based on the density of accidents and hazards reported. With a score of 7.1, Malaysia sits below Russia but ahead of Belgium (weird…).

Kuala Lumpur is not ranked in Waze’s traffic index but we can see that the French city of Rennes has the smoothest traffic while Manila has the worst. Indonesia also has the most number of heavily congested cities.