Together with Wichita State University

I graduated from Wichita State University about a decade ago… and wow, has it changed.

The Braeburn Golf Course is now Braeburn Square (with several awesome restaurants).
The Innovation Campus didn’t exist.
And there are two Starbucks now.

This isn’t your dad’s Wichita State. Honestly, it’s not even my Wichita State. This is the new and improved WSU.

So if you’re a high school senior, or know one, don’t miss the 2026–27 Freshman Scholarship deadline on March 1. There’s plenty to go around.

Why is Wichita so bad at driving?

If you’ve ever typed “Wichita drivers” into Google, congratulations: you’ve discovered a genre.

A quick scroll through r/Wichita (enter at your own risk) gives you titles like:

• “Why do people forget how to drive on Kellogg?”

• “Wichita drivers — why are you awful?”

• “Kellogg: careful”

• “Why can’t people drive?”

• “Kellogg traffic theory”

• “Wichita drivers / Rock–Kellogg light design”

The tone ranges from exasperated to unhinged, but the underlying claim is always the same:

But is that actually true?

Or are we just trapped in a feedback loop of cursed intersections, near-misses, and very loud memories?

Grab your snorkel everyone because we are about to dive in deep.

First: What Does “Bad at Driving” Even Mean?

Before we dunk on ourselves, we need to establish some common grounds. “Bad driving” can mean a few different things:

1. How often crashes happen (fender-benders, insurance claims)

2. How severe crashes are (injuries, fatalities)

3. Behavior that feels bad (speed variance, bad merges, red-light roulette)

4. Road design that amplifies mistakes (wide arterials*, complex interchanges)

*an arterial is just a big, multi-lane road whose main job is moving cars efficiently, not serving local access.

Most online arguments mash all four together. This deep dive separates them.

Scoreboard #1: Do Wichita Drivers Crash More Than Similar Cities?

One of the cleanest national datasets we have is Allstate’s America’s Best Drivers Report, which ranks the 200 largest U.S. cities based on how frequently drivers file collision insurance claims.

It’s not vibes. It’s not tickets. It’s “how often do drivers actually hit something hard enough to call insurance.”

Using the most recent report (based on 2022–2023 claims data), here’s how Wichita stacks up against the peer cities everyone loves to compare us to:

Average Years Between Collision Claims

• Wichita: 10.24 years

• Oklahoma City: 10.06 years

• Tulsa: 9.83 years

• National average: ~10.6 years

TL/DR:

• Wichita drivers file collision claims slightly more often than the national average

• But less often than Tulsa, and roughly on par with OKC

• The sad part here - we are ranked 56th. In 2015, we were #11! We dropped 45 spots.

That puts Wichita… squarely in the middle (what a surprise):

Not amazing.
Not disastrous.
Definitely not “worst in the country.”

If Wichita were truly exceptional in its bad driving, you’d expect a massive gap here. You just don’t see one though.

So Why Does It Feel So Bad?

This is where Wichita’s reputation starts to make more sense.

1. Kellogg Is an Error Amplifier

Kellogg isn’t just a road. It’s a stress test.

High speeds + frequent on/off ramps + short merge distances = mistakes get punished immediately. A driver who’s merely mediocre on a neighborhood street becomes a full-blown menace (fun fact: did you know Dennis the Menace takes place in Wichita?) at 65 mph with three lanes collapsing.

That’s why so many Reddit threads fixate on Kellogg specifically. It is a hot bed chaos.

2. Speed Variance > Speed Itself

Wichita doesn’t just have fast drivers. It has drivers going very different speeds on the same road.

Some folks are doing 10 under. Others are doing 15 over. The danger isn’t speed alone it’s unpredictability. That creates constant lane-changing, sudden braking, and the feeling that anything could happen at any moment.

This gif helps explain it a bit (and how traffic jams happen in general):

3. Wide Roads Trick Our Brains

Wichita has a lot of wide arterials. Psychologically, wide lanes make people feel safer driving faster, even when intersections, turn lanes, and signals say otherwise.

So you get:

• Faster approaches

• Late decisions

• Hard braking

Which feels chaotic even when crashes don’t actually occur.

4. Negativity Bias Is a Hell of a Drug

You don’t remember the 99 normal merges.

You remember the one guy who crossed three lanes like he was dodging asteroids.

Online spaces amplify that effect (cough facebook and reddit cough cough). Nobody posts “man Kellogg was pleasant today.”

Scoreboard #2: Okay, But What About Serious Crashes?

This is where Wichita does deserve some scrutiny.

Like many U.S. cities, Wichita saw an increase in fatal and serious crashes during and after the pandemic. That trend isn’t unique to Wichita. It showed up nationwide, but it reinforces why the concern feels real.

In other words:

• Wichita isn’t uniquely awful

• But it also isn’t immune from the broader national decline in driving behavior post-2020

That matters, because severity is different from frequency. You can have an average number of crashes that are more dangerous because of speed, vehicle size, or road design.

So… Are Wichita Drivers Actually Worse Than Omaha or Des Moines?

Here’s the honest answer: Not really.

On collision frequency alone, Wichita looks:

• Slightly worse than the national average

• Roughly comparable to Oklahoma City

• Better than some peer metros

The data doesn’t support the idea that Wichita is some kind of statistical outlier. What it does support is this:

That’s not the same thing as being the worst, but it does explain the reputation. Also, people just love to complain here in Wichita. I mean seriously, have you ever driven in Houston?! That is 100x worse (no offense to our Texan friends).

What Would Actually Make Driving Better Here?

If we wanted to move the needle (and calm Reddit down), the solutions are pretty boring, which is usually a good sign.

• Engineering - Better signal timing, clearer lane markings, and fewer “guess what this lane does” moments. Some intersections are way worse than others, like Kellogg and Rock.

• Enforcement - Targeted enforcement at known problem areas beats blanket crackdowns every time.

• Education (but local) - Not generic safety slogans — Wichita-specific stuff. Zipper merges. Speed variance. Kellogg etiquette. Oh and learn how to use a Roundabout people! (I heard Jennifer Ray from the Monarch say on Dewbey Bros Podcast that the best time to sit outside on a nice day is around 5pm in Delano and watch people not know how to drive around it.)

Final Verdict

So… why does Wichita feel so bad at driving?

Because:

• A handful of high-stress roads amplify mistakes

• Speed differences create unpredictability

• Humans remember chaos more than competence

But when you zoom out and look at the data?

Wichita isn’t uniquely terrible. It’s just aggressively average, with a few cursed intersections doing a lot of reputational damage.

And honestly, that might be the most Wichita answer possible.

What do you want to see us go deep on in a future deep dive?

Let us know!

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