Is he drunk or just dodging potholes?

That old joke among Pennsylvania motorists might not be so far off the mark after all.

QuoteWizard, an online insurance marketplace, listed Pennsylvania as having the fifth worst road infrastructure in the United States.

“The back roads are nothing but potholes,” said Darrel Hillwig, former assistant chief of the Bruin Volunteer Fire Department. “They're finally working on the road between Petrolia and here and it's been a disaster for a couple years.”

QuoteWizard used percentages of poor-condition roads, annual cost per motorist due to roads in need of repair and percentage of structurally deficient bridges to rank the 50 states.

Researchers also discovered a correlation between the positive scores of states that use funds to maintain roads and states that ranked high for road infrastructure.

Also, states that spent their highway funds on the expansion of roads instead of repair fell into an endless cycle of repair, while states that spent their transportation funding on road repair scored higher, the report said.

Chief Charles Barnes, of the Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department, said he wasn't surprised by the rating.

Barnes and Hillwig both pointed out how deteriorating road conditions can lead to longer response times for fire departments — especially in rural areas.

“The roads are narrow. The guardrails are in disrepair,” Barnes said. “The berms are falling apart with the truck traffic. There's just more traffic now.”

Barnes added that roads in Pennsylvania are bad everywhere, not just in rural areas.

According to the list, 30 percent of Pennsylvania's roads are in need of repair and the annual cost per motorist as a result of the poor roads is $610.

The QuoteWizard report said 18 percent of Pennsylvania's bridges are deficient, and that 22 percent of annual state spending is on road repairs.

The worst road infrastructure in the U.S., according to QuoteWizard, is in Rhode Island. The country's smallest state has the designation of having 53 percent deficient roads, $823 spent per motorist, 23 percent bridge deficiency and 2 percent of state spending on roads.

Oklahoma comes in second, West Virginia third and Mississippi fourth in the top five worst road infrastructures.

The top five best road infrastructures on the list are Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Oregon and Maryland, according to the QuoteWizard list.

Tennessee had just 5 percent of roads in poor condition, $194 annual cost per motorist due to poor road condition, 4 percent of bridges deemed structurally insufficient and 16 percent of state spending on road repairs.