Providence Among RI's Most Stressful Cities To Drive In: HiRoad Study

PROVIDENCE, RI — A recent WalletHub study found that Rhode Island was the second-worst state to drive in. Another recent study determined that Providence is among the top five most stressful in America's second worst state.

HiRoad, an auto insurance company, collected 1.3 million driving-related tweets for their recent study, analyzing them using an academic tool called TensiStrength.

TensiStrength is an AI tool developed by Professor Mike Thelwall at the University of Wolverhampton. It detects stress levels in short pieces of text and assigns them a stress level score from -5 (very stressed) to +5 (very relaxed). For the study, HiRoad considered any tweet that scored between -2 (stressed) and -5 (very stressed) as "stressed."

What the tool determined is that Providence is the fifth most stressful Rhode Island city to drive in, with nearly 43 percent of tweets indicating stress.

Cranston is the most stressful Rhode Island city to drive in, the study found, with 49.8 percent of tweets related to driving in the area being deemed "stressed."

Read more: See The Top 10 Most Stressful Cities In RI To Drive: HiRoad Study

The study also found that the worst pet peeve for Rhode Island drivers is cyclists, followed by traffic, potholes, red light runners, parking, swerving, speeding and tailgating. The most stressful day to drive in the Ocean State is Thursday.

Traffic tended to be the most annoying pet peeve for drivers nationwide, according to HiRoad Vice President Steve Harris.

"Stressing triggers vary from driver to driver,"Harris said in a statement. "Traffic was found to be the most annoying pet peeve in the majority of states, and overall, we discovered that bad weather makes drivers the most stressed. And that stressor can lead to accidents, according to the Federal Highway Administration, one in five road crashes every year are due to weather conditions."