Drivers in This Upstate NY City are ‘Lost’ More Than Anywhere in the State

Winding roadways. Intersecting highways. Hamlets, within townships, within towns. There are a lot of details to be aware of when driving in the Albany metropolitan area. It can be confusing or intimidating, and in worst case scenarios, will force you to search for directions on your mobile device.

A recently-released report has backed that theory, stating that drivers in the Albany area are searching for help at a rate that's higher than anyone else.

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Report: Drivers in Albany, New York are 'Lost' More Than Others in NY

A study done on the gambling website New York Bets focused on the amount of times that drivers in New York were searching for directions on Google Maps, in an attempt to identify the population of people that are lost in New York more than others.

The report claims that there were over four million searches for directions done on Google in New York in the past 12 months, and when broken down by metropolitan area, it was determined that drivers in Albany, New York have the worst sense of direction out of any group of people in the state.

Google users in Albany searched for the term "Google Maps" 51,580 times, which broke down to 51.8 times per 100 for the entire population. That rate (51.8) placed it above every other metro area in the state, which by the power of extrapolation, suggests that drivers in Albany are lost more frequently than drivers in any other city in the state.

Here are the metro areas that Albany beat out for this inauspicious title:

1. Albany (51.8 per 100 of population searches for Google Maps)
2. Rochester (43.8)
3. Buffalo (39.8)
4. Binghamton (35.6)
5. Syracuse (34.6)
6. Cheektowaga (23.1)
7. New Rochelle (18.1)
8. Yonkers (16.5)
9. New York City (15.1)

To be fair, these numbers show that New Yorkers are getting lost no matter where they're driving. That said, there is still a pretty large gap between the No. 1 seeded Albany, and the rest of the cities on the list.

Here is how drivers in New York stack up against the drivers in states surrounding them on the map:

• No. 2: Vermont (25.2 per 100 of population searches for Google Maps)
• No. 3: Massachusetts (24.8)
• No. 8: New Hampshire (21.4)
• No. 13: New York (19.6)
• No. 16: New Jersey (19.1)
• No. 18: Connecticut (18.3)
• No. 24: Pennsylvania (16.9)

See, this list tells a much different story. Roads in the Midwest and other regions of the country are laid out in grid form. More four-way stops and more 90-degree turns make traveling in these areas much more simple. Meanwhile, roads in the Northeast twist and turn, and generally, make very little sense.

So, while Albany drivers are getting lost more than most in New York, it appears as though Northeast drivers are also getting lost more than most in the entire country.