States with the highest gas taxes do not systematically have the best roads, and low gas‑tax states do not reliably have the worst roads ⭐; the relationship is noisy and heavily confounded.[1][2][3][4]

Highest and lowest state gas taxes (gasoline, state only)

Does gas‑tax level coincide with road quality?

Major confounding factors

For causal inference, you would want panel data on gas‑tax changes, net per‑capita road‑funding, and engineering‑based pavement condition measures, controlling for VMT, climate, urbanization, and governance; most public rankings are descriptive composites and not designed to isolate the tax effect.[3][4][2]