Connecticut Not Among Best States To Ride

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com

Admittedly, I haven’t been to Florida since spring break my senior year in college. That was 36 years ago. My roommate drove to Daytona and Ft. Lauderdale in my orange and white, millionth edition Chevy Vega GT. While beer consumption limits my memories of the trip, I do recall that Florida was flat and the roads were straight. So how does Progressive Insurance rank Florida as the best state to ride, with Georgia being second?

I lived in Arizona for 23 years. It’s a place with too much traffic, and outside of the metros of Phoenix and Tucson, there aren’t that many roads. The ones that do exist are designed to get you from one place to another. So how does the insurance company rank Arizona as the third best state to ride, followed by South Carolina and Kansas? Kansas?

Rounding out the Top 10 states are Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Carolina and Iowa.

Connecticut didn’t make the Top 20 and neither did California? How can you keep California off the “best of” list? It has the Pacific Coast Highway. Well, Progressive considered the following factors:

– Number of good riding days, based on temperature and precipitation.

– Likelihood of getting in a crash.

– Percentage of smoother riding roadways.

– Population density.

– Average price for a gallon of regular gasoline.

Connecticut obviously loses out with high gas prices, loads of people, potholed and uneven roads, and lousy weather. We do have fairly educated riders and a short riding season, though, which helps keeps the crash rate down – although this year seems to be an exception.

Population density thanks to New York City is the reason New York didn’t make the Top 20 list. Also excluded from the list released last week were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. New England was shut out. We’ll just have to keep the joys of riding here our own little secret.