Updates Required: Canada ranks 19th in Zutobi survey of the worst roads globally

Ottawa, Ontario – Love pothole ridden roads and embarrassing grades? Neither do we, but no advertising is bad advertising, or so the saying goes.

In a survey by driving education company Zutobi, they studied 59 countries based on the ratio of roads to land mass, road accident fatalities per capita, and changes in road quality over a five-year period.

This leaves Canada among the top 20 countries with the worst roads in the world, tied in score with Oman and just beaten out by Iceland.

However, a closer look at these metrics show that smaller nation states were more likely to get favourable results. Denser populations in smaller landmasses make urban planning easier, with each road serving more people.

This is especially clear with closer examination of Canada’s abysmal ranking. Our road quality is on par with global roadway leaders like Slovenia, Estonia and the United Kingdom – countries in the top 20. Our poor score largely attributed to higher roadway accident fatality rates and a poor roadway to landmass ratio.

Singapore, the Netherlands and Switzerland were the three countries with the best roadways thanks to consistent road development, low traffic accident rates and having more roads per landmass.