As a Nashville resident, I didn’t need any sort of study to tell me this. Driving around Music City truly is a daily, stressful occurrence, and now, the statistics say there’s only one other city in the country that’s more stressful to drive in than Nashville.
There’s no other way to put it: Music City is one of the premiere tourist destinations in the United States. 17.4 million people visited Nashville in 2025, and that annual visitor number is expected to gradually increase in the next couple of years (especially with the Super Bowl on its way).
Though often criticized for some of it’s touristy characteristics, people evidently can’t get enough of the pedal taverns, artist-owned bars, hot chicken, and $15 beers.
And tourists evidently aren’t paying attention to all of the negative headlines that surrounds Nashville. Let me tell you… there’s a lot of them. For one, Nashville has a liquid garbage problem they are currently addressing. Music City has also been ranked very high on the global “Tourist Trap” cities, and is often at the top of the list when it comes to most congested cities.
Here’s another study to confirm that, as if there was any real necessity for further confirmation.
Thanks to Lemon Law Experts, we now know that Nashville ranks very high in terms of “Most Stressful Cities To Drive In.” The study the law experts conducted took residents from cities all over the country, surveyed their driving experience, and then crafted a stressful driving score, as they explained:
“We surveyed residents of 40 major U.S. cities and asked about their driving experiences and how their encounters have impacted them. We then awarded points to responses that represented stressful situations and calculated a stressful driving score on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 representing the most stressful cities.”
In really no surprise at all, Nashville scored very close to 100. There was actually only one city that was ranked higher in terms of stress, and that wasn’t really all that shocking either:
Most Stressful Cities To Drive In
10) Houston, TX – 90.14
9) Pittsburgh, PA – 90.80
8) Louisville, KY – 91.12
7) Orlando, FL – 91.23
6) Columbus, OH – 91.97
5) Baltimore, MD – 93.02
4) San Antonio, TX – 93.62
3) Philadelphia, PA – 94.10
2) Nashville, TN – 97.21
1) Atlanta, GA – 99.40
Sound about right… and congrats to Atlanta for almost getting a perfect (or imperfect, I suppose) score of 100. That place is quite literally a nightmare to get through, and I say that as someone who is often fighting the traffic of the city that came in with a 97.21 stress ranking.
On the flip side, some of the least stressful cities to drive in, according to the survey, are San Francisco, California and Sacremento, California. Those must be a cakewalk to drive around when compared to Nashville. And if you haven’t been to Music City, just take it from NASCAR driver Ryan Preece: it’s not a fun city to try and get around in.
We recently sat down with him on our Whiskey Riff Raff podcast, and to put things succinctly, a literal NASCAR driver isn’t fond of driving around in Nashville:
“Oh, well, you guys have a good reason (to drive scared in Nashville), man. I will say my blood pressure was really high on the way here trying to get to you because it is just it’s insane. I don’t know how you guys feel, but if you’re in the left lane, just make sure you’re still passing the guy who’s next to you and don’t just ride next to him.”
If that doesn’t tell you that driving around in Nashville is stressful, I don’t know what will.
