October the 31st, 2024 – The DiscoverCars portal has rated Zagreb the most stressful city to drive in among its competition. Not a great look for a European capital that has seen a massive boom in cars on the roads.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, DiscoverCars looked at several cities across Europe to try to locate the most stressful to drive in, based on the heart rate data of the drivers involved.
discovercars: zagreb is the number one most stressful city to drive in
Drivers recorded their journeys using dash cams in order to show which part of the city they were driving in. The results were fascinating. The Croatian capital Zagreb turned out to be the most stressful city to drive in, right next to Vienna in nearby Austria.
It should be noted that the cities that were studied include: Copenhagen (Denmark), Dublin (Ireland), Reykjavik (Iceland), Stockholm (Sweden), Tallinn (Estonia), Vienna (Austria) and Zagreb (Croatia).
In addition to measuring driver heart rates, researchers also used information from online platforms such as Reddit and travel forums to see what people were saying about the general road conditions, parking and what it’s like to drive in each of these cities, N1 reports.
zagreb’s constant battle with roads, traffic and the increasing number of cars on the road
Zagreb achieved the highest stress score of all the cities that we included in the second part of the DiscoverCars study. The difference between the average running heart rate and the average resting heart rate was 25.5. The highest heart rate recorded while driving in Zagreb was 115 beats per minute, compared to the lowest resting heart rate of 75 beats per minute. All of the heart rate readings were within the normal range, but the highest resting heart rate was 94 beats per minute, which is considered fairly high.
Drivers in Zagreb say that rush hour brings congested roads, and traffic jams make it difficult to travel around the city in the morning and late afternoon. Main thoroughfares such as Zagrebačka Avenija (Zagreb Avenue) with its two lanes are particularly busy. Locals and visitors alike have commented on the difficulty of finding parking spaces in the city centre, adding to the overall picture of Zagreb being the most stressful city to drive in.
However, it’s worth stating that the researchers noted that if you want to escape from the city and find peace and quiet, you can drive to gorgeous Sljeme (Medvednica) in just half an hour. In the heat of the Croatian summer, this is a wonderful place to enjoy cooler climes, hiking trails through the dense forest – and in the winter, you can also ski here. Looking down on the city from the top of the mountain, you’ll be treated with a panoramic view of the landscape and Zagreb sprawling down below. In such cases, despite Zagreb being stressful to drive in, there’s a payoff.
The number of cars on Zagreb’s roads has increased exponentially in a relatively short space of time, and the powers that be are continuously trying to improve the situation. More parking spaces, garages, entrances into the city and more are in the works, but whether or not that will be enough to actually relieve the capital’s congested roads is yet to be seen.
