The world's best (and worst) countries for driving

Telegraph

08-04-2025

What's your least favourite piece of road? The M6 near Birmingham? London's North Circular? The A303 when everyone in West London is bound for Devon and Cornwall? Would they be so bad if you were alone, able to take things at your own pace, and not quite so fed up with the same old schlep?
A driving holiday is all about turning the A-to-B part of the trip into a pleasure rather than a pain. This can mean everything from petrol and EV charging stations, to basic road safety, and a decent bite to eat in a pleasant service station.
It might also mean a scenic experience – whether that's deserts and canyons, volcanoes and rainforests, or distant views of cities and big skies. For some, spotting Stonehenge or the Angel of the North from the road might be a thrill. Others might get high on just not seeing any other cars.
If you're taking the family, you will want plenty of places to stop. If the roads are not all paved, you will want to be able to hire an affordable pick-up or jeep-type vehicle.
So, how can you ensure you choose the destination best-suited to your specific road-trip requirements? Helpfully, we've done the leg work, crunching the data available and surveying national media and international reports (by the likes of the UN) to give scores for 10 crucial criteria, using the overall scores to come up with 10 great destinations for a driving trip – as well as three best avoided, and some honourable mentions.
The 10 best countries for driving
10. Namibia
'Africa' and 'fly-drive holiday' do not go together naturally. Mauritania, the DRC and Chad have some of the worst roads on earth. Nigeria and the more developed southern nations are crash zones. Namibia is an outlier, however – and a fairly well-established fly-drive destination, with or without a professional chauffeur. The roads in the vast coastal Namib Desert are, unsurprisingly, not the world's best, and you will need a good 4WD for the gravel – and dune visits – but the region in general is very doable by car.
Namibia's Caprivi Strip is a narrow belt of land that runs east towards Victoria Falls, wedged between Angola to the north and Botswana to the south. It's full of game and has stunning riverine landscapes, and a tarred road. Namibia used to have a bad road accident rate, but appears to now be improving.
9. Argentina
The eighth-largest country in the world is great for long-distance driving holidays. Three highways create a mega-triangle of epic challenges: the Ruta 9 from Buenos Aires to the Bolivian border via the Andean valleys around Salta; the Ruta 40 from the border all the way down to Southern Patagonia, running parallel to the mountains via the wine regions near Mendoza, the lake district and the Unesco-listed Cave of Painted Hands; and the Ruta 3, from Ushuaia on the Beagle Channel all the way back to Buenos Aires, via the Pampas. The number 2 and 11 highways are fast tracks to the seaside resorts of Mar del Plata and Villa Gesell.
Local drivers can be temperamental, to put it mildly, and some macho drivers behave like pound-shop Juan Manuel Fangios. But highways are not busy by European standards, and there are spectacular high roads into the glacial valleys of the south and the multi-hued mountains of the north. Avoid Buenos Aires and other big cities with their grid layouts, raging rush hours and creeping taxis.
8. England
Familiarity needn't breed contempt, but decades of misguided development have left the British motorway system in a deleterious state. Logistics hubs, vans and lorries have spawned like a virus. A-roads are snarled up too, and seem to be the chosen drag-strip for aggressive boy (and men) racers. The food in motorway service stations is anti-nutritious junk, and country lanes are insane 60mph zones with too few passing places and lots of tractors.
But this is home, and there is something deep and a little bit magical about ignoring the obstacles and joining the generations of gazetteer-wielding tourers and revisiting your country by car. The key things are: take it slowly, time your departures carefully, avoid motorways, enjoy the journey as well as the getting there. We are some of the most courteous drivers on earth – we can celebrate that.
7. United States
It has a rotten traffic accident rate. It has freeways with so many lanes that you have to plan your slip-road exit half an hour before taking it. It has bewildering highway naming and numbering systems. It has ultra-fat gas-guzzling cars and mean cops. But the USA has mythologised its roads through movies, literature, photography and songs. It provides the comforting diners and cartoonish roadside architecture that make a fly-drive holiday feel special and surreal.
This film set stuff really exists! Tourist-friendly circuits like the Pacific Coast Highway and Blue Ridge Parkway are sublime. Empty highways like those around northern Arizona or across deepest Texas are dreamlike. Spotting Monument Valley in the mirror is too awesome to ignore. Drive by daylight, keep your daily mileage down and stick to the law, and being on the American road is still a great adventure.
6. Costa Rica
Small, mountainous, wild and beautiful, Costa Rica is generally viewed as 'Central America lite'. It's certainly the region's easiest country for a fly-drive (though Panama is also very easy to explore by car). The Pan-American Highway provides a fast track to main towns and inland national parks but national routes 126 and 140, north of capital San José, are more fun if you want to slow down through the steep, green hills, white-water rivers and coffee plantations.
There are decent roads to Puerto Limón on the Caribbean coast and all the way down the popular main Pacific Coast, though the Osa Peninsula has very poor roads and Tortuguero is only viable by plane and boat. Pitted roads can be an issue anywhere in Costa Rica, so hire a car with good suspension.
5. New Zealand
Temperate, mountainous, lake-filled, gorgeously green: New Zealand is ideal for a car or campervan experience. The 5.4 million-strong population is concentrated in a few cities and towns, and once you're out on rural highways, you can feel quite alone – but are rarely far from a place to refuel, sleep or eat. The variety of landscapes is impressive. The North Island lends itself to a big circular drive over a week or so, taking in Auckland, Napier and the Whanganui National Park. An easy trip with a year-round balmy(ish) climate and some spectacular scenery is the Coromandel Peninsula.
South Island is more about big country views, with Fiordland as the grand finale. New Zealand is only a wee bit bigger than the UK, but driving there couldn't be more of a contrast. It's not all perfect, though; some back-country roads are pitted and pocked (though the government has committed £1.8bn to improve things), and government statistics show 'alcohol or drugs was a factor in 48 per cent of fatal crashes', so care has to be taken.
4. Jordan
Most visitors to Jordan hire a driver, partly in order to relax and enjoy the ride – and views – but also because it's a great way to make local connections. The 115-mile King's Highway connects Amman to Aqaba via, with a few short detours, Mount Nebo (where Moses glimpsed the Promised Land), the market town of Madaba – which has some of the best preserved Byzantine mosaics in the world, Shobak and the Dana Biosphere Reserve, and the hilltop city of Al-Karak. There are signposts in Arabic and English. Not far off the highway lie Petra, the desert of Wadi Rum and the resort hotels of the Dead Sea.
3. Scotland
Of the four UK nations, Scotland has the most alluring roads. The NC500 circular road trip is now a victim of its success, with too many campervans to make it much fun for locals or cyclists – but there are still many options around and off this popular tourist circuit. Good A-roads cut through the Flow County and Dumfries and Galloway, with its star-loving dark skies. Away from the loch-side roads there are heavenly little lanes to relatively tourist-free hamlets and rural lodges.
Aberdeenshire and Moray have their own road circuit, NE 250, that takes drivers through the sunniest, driest regions of the country. And, if you take yourself to Shetland, there's easy cruising over the main islands, with hops on car ferries for taking breathers. And there's EV charging all the way.
2. Spain
Spanish motorways are fast and dull, as elsewhere, but once you move on to back roads in regions such as Andalucia and Extremadura, the magic of the interior is all around. A small car is best for the narrow, sharp-cornered lanes that wind through the tiny mountaintop towns and villages. Roads shadow the ancient trade and pilgrim routes as well as fabulous byways: the Via de la Plata, Don Quixote's La Mancha, the Camino de Santiago.
There are sherry, ham and wine roads. The coast – lazily generalised as 'the Costas' – feels very different when you do it by car, weaving in and out of resorts and inter-resort towns, and slowing down to explore wilder, less impacted places like Cabo de Gata. The same goes for the islands: Majorca has a superb round-island road just up from the beach strip. Even Benidorm is a bit like LA when you approach by road.
1. Iceland
Few numbered highways are circular; even fewer are nice – but Iceland's glorious Route 1 (known as the Ring Road) is all the things the M25 isn't. The 828-mile route runs round the edges of this large island, visiting many of the most sublime landscapes. A three or four-day jaunt from capital Reykjavik on the so-called Golden Circle is perfect for seeing key sights, including Thingvellir National Park and Thingvallavatn Lake, the famous Strokkur geyser, Gullfoss waterfall, lots of mountains and glaciers, and the Blue Lagoon.
Tourism is big business, but roads are quiet in shoulder and off-seasons. Iceland is dotted with lovely roadside chalets with hot tubs (wonderful after a day behind the wheel), and also has the world's lowest road-fatality rate per capita. On the downside, car hire is very expensive. EV charging is not as widely available as in market leader Norway, but thanks to the superb renewable energy infrastructure, it is the cheapest in Europe. Just as well, really, as there are no railways in Iceland – so car is king, whichever way you look at it.
Honourable mentions
Choosing a top ten is tricky, to say the least. We aimed for diversity of landscapes as well as the suitability of a country for a driving holiday, plus safety and practical concerns.
Some countries that didn't make the grade are nonetheless favourites with British road tourists. Ireland feels familiar but more mellow and has the splendid Wild Atlantic Way coast road in the west; France, which is something of a national equivalent of the A303 for the monied classes of southern England, has its well-liked aires and some lovely rural roads; Italy has iconic appeal, especially for soft-top and sports car pilots who want to live out their James Bond fantasies on the Amalfitana.
Australia didn't quite make the premier league because it has great tracts of nothingness that are arguably better suited to a rail trip – though the southeast corner has obvious appeal, and more varied vistas. Tasmania is great, too.
In the Americas, Mexico, Canada, Chile and Peru are very drive-able. Mexico is a bit like the US, with fabulous desert highways and the excellent Carretera 1 that runs the length of Baja California. The food is better, the towns prettier and the indigenous culture is more highly valued than north of the Rio Bravo/Grande. But the FCDO map for Mexico is a confusing patchwork of green and orange sections, which can make planning a road trip a challenge.
Canada is great for long lonely drives. Chile has one amazing road from the north to the south, which extends on to the Carretera Austral. Peru is great for driving on the Andean high plain and along the coast, but Lima is hell.
Three of the worst countries for driving
China
About twenty-five years ago, a quarter of a billion Chinese people began to swap their bicycles for four wheels. Beijing became, very quickly, a gridlock monster, encircled by concentric M25-type orbitals. Problems abound: slow drivers; drivers not looking left, right or behind; mega-tailbacks at toll gates; terrible rural and mountain roads; cops and other officials who speak nothing but Mandarin and perhaps a local dialect.
India
The horn-code music system used on Indian roads is harder to work out than the Hackney cab driver's Knowledge. Cows and rickshaws cause havoc. Markets stray onto city roads. Rates of road traffic accidents are middling, but India has the highest number of road fatalities globally, at 250,000 deaths a year. Like the rest of South and South-East Asia, it's best to have a driver here – and even that can be hairy as well as exhilarating.
Zimbabwe
From being stopped all the time for no obvious reason to encountering maniacally fast overtakers and blood-curdling accidents, Zimbabwe is not recommended for driving holidays. The FCDO reports, 'The standard of driving is very poor in Zimbabwe. Traffic accidents are a common cause of death and injury'.
Its list of hazards includes deep potholes, broken traffic lights, vehicles without lights (including heavy good vehicles and cyclists), poorly lit roads, stray livestock and pedestrians. Zimbabwe's road-crash fatality rate in 2022 was 2,000 deaths per year – more than five deaths per day – but 'may be over three times higher at some 7,000 road deaths per year', according to WHO estimates. The UN predicted this 'to triple in the next ten years in the absence of concerted action'. None was taken.