Malaysia In Top 10 Most Stressful Countries To Drive In The World

Some new findings (or it is a full-on study?) has dared to come out and say that Malaysia is one of the 10 countries that are the most stressful to drive in, coming in at 8th place behind Belgium (shockingly) and ahead of Brazil.

Really, this shouldn’t necessarily come as a shock to us local motorists, but it’s useful to have confirmation that our roads definitely do not provide the most serene or fuss-free driving experience regardless of the car you happen to be behind the wheel of.

Of course, take this report/ranking with a pinch of salt as it was published by Confused.com, a UK-based insurance and financial services comparison platform. Not exactly the last word in scientific behavioural journaling.

Still, they did draw upon data from several rather reputable sources to inform their study, most notable of which are the World Health Organisation and the World Economic Forum.

Interestingly, the United Kingdom ranks 10 places down in 18th on their table, just below Singapore in 17th place. The list is topped by the UAE as the most stressful country to drive in, according to them. Emirati drivers also boast the highest number of fatal accidents (2,724) per 100,000 people, followed by India (1,138).

Within the coveted Top 10, the only other Asian country to rank so high (which is a bad thing) besides Malaysia is Hong Kong, which is notoriously short on space to drive much less build new/larger/better roads. Other ASEAN countries aren’t even present until the Philippines in 13th place.

Is Malaysia really that bad to drive in? We know things can get pretty frustrating in the Klang Valley and maybe other cities such as Georgetown and Johor Bahru, but on the whole and factoring in rural roads are we worse than Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, or Myanmar?

The mind boggles.

Further down in their findings they also rank the Top 10 countries with the worst quality roads, something we reckon plenty of Malaysians are pretty used to experiencing. Whether its sheer luck or entirely factual, we don’t make the cut on this particular list. This is good, if surprising, outcome.

Zimbabwe comes in at the top with the worst road infrastructure score, which is to expected, followed by fellow podium sitters Romania and Brazil. However, the Philippines is the only Asian (let alone ASEAN) entrant at number 8 ahead of Iran and the Czech Republic.

Somehow, the Philippines has worse roads than we do, but apparently it’s much less stressful to drive in than Malaysia. Makes sense…