Over the past couple of years, there’s been a concentrated effort by our politicians and ruling class to gaslight Oklahomans into believing that our notoriously awful roads and bridges – one of our state’s more obnoxious, unique, and very annoying hallmarks – are somehow improving, or, even worse, becoming the best in the nation.
It’s been a bold little PR campaign, especially for anyone who has ever driven on our roads and knows how terrible they truly are…
-
-
Well, I have some semi-good news to report!
Despite our politicians’ best efforts to trick us into believing that everything is smooth driving, rumors of our roads’ improvement have been greatly exaggerated.
Check out this report via The Oklahoman:
New study ranks Oklahoma's roads among the worst in the nation.
Oklahoma has some of the worst roads in the nation, according to a 2026 report from Consumer Affairs.
Grading both the condition of road surfaces, along with traffic fatalities, consumer advocacy and review website Consumer Affairs ranked Oklahoma as No. 5 on their list of states with the worst roads.
In the analysis completed in 2026, the website found nearly a quarter of Oklahoma's rural roads were in poor condition. This puts Oklahoma at No. 5 on the list of America's worst roads.
More than one-third of the state's urban roads are also considered poor.
The Consumer Affairs analysis also looked at traffic fatalities. For every 100 million miles traveled inside Oklahoma, there are 1.57 fatalities. This is the eighth-worst ranking among U.S. states.
Whew. That’s a relief.
For a while there, I was starting to wonder if I was the crazy one. Maybe the roads in Oklahoma really were getting better, and the bumps, jolts, and axle-rattling thuds I experience every time I hit the road were nothing but a figment of my imagination.
It’s nice to know those experiences were real, and that I was simply being gaslighted!
Anyway, now that it’s official that our roads suck again – and are apparently nothing more than low-maintenance death traps with lane striping – it will be interesting to see if Stitt, ODOT, and all the random “guest columnists” who were trying to trick us into thinking Oklahoma had good roads will resume their campaign, or move on to something else.
Like, I don’t know, convincing us we have good air quality…
In the meantime, I guess you can go read the full report over at Consumer Affairs. They’ve got all the depressing stats, rankings, and data needed to confirm what every Oklahoma driver already learns the hard way about once a week, usually right after hitting a pothole, checking the rearview mirror, and saying, “Well, that didn’t sound good.”
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
