Stay Wazey Panama

If you drive in Panama City, familiarizing yourself with the popular navigation application Waze is almost a must. This year for the first time, using data collected by drivers, Waze released their first “Drivers Index”.

The index ranked things like, driver satisfaction, traffic, safety, services, road quality and more.

If you drive frequently in Panama, you might be surprised to hear that Panama did not rank last in any of these categories. In a couple categories, Panama actually ranked pretty high!

How did Waze come to these conclusion? The index is based several key factors:

1) The level of traffic, both frequency as well as the severity of traffic jams.

2) The quality of roads and the infrastructure created by the country.

3) Driver safety, this is based on the frequency of accidents, road hazards and poor weather.

4) Driver services, which include access to gas stations, facilities and parking

5) The Socio-Economic looks at things like the populations access to cars and  the impact of gas prices

6) And finally, “Wazeyness,” the level of helpfulness and happiness within the "Waze community".

Overall, Panama was ranked the 8th worst place to drive.  While Panama ranked low in satisfaction, traffic, safety, services, and on the socio-economic index, the country ranked high in road quality and the Wazeyness Index.