Among cities with more than 500,000 residents, Detroit has the
safest drivers, with accident rates that are 20 percent below the
national average.For cities with more than 1 million residents, Phoenix has the
safest big-city commuters, with accident rates about equal to the
national average.
Here is much more, Philadelphia is a disaster and L.A. isn’t so safe either. I wonder to what extent these rankings simply proxy for traffic density. Here are some charts. Overall Sioux Falls, Tucson, and El Paso seem to be relatively safe cities for driving.
As a native Detroiter who frequently returns home (I was just there a few days ago), I should note that this stat is even more impressive given that Detroiters drive VERY fast. Even on urban freeways, you better be doing 70 or 75 or you’re going to get passed left and right.
Data on metropolitan areas would be more valuable than data on cities, as is almost always the case.
Based on our frustrating experience of getting timely crime data out of Detroit, I’d question the reporting. It might be a good place to have an accident go unreported.
The most dangerous roads, I recall reading somewhere, are “local arteries”: streets with lots of intersections that carry lots of through traffic at 35+ Mph. These streets are distributed very unevenly; certainly Philadelphia is dominated by them and LA, famous for its freeways, may have a lot too.
LA Freeways? I almost died on Sunday when some nut half-ran a red light on San Vincente at Wilshire. Once he realized he was going to hit the car next to me he slammed on his brakes, the car next to me swerved into my lane, I swerved into the (empty) oncoming lane.
The other problem in LA is that if you accidently cut someone off, you might get shot.
Accident rates and safety are NOT the same thing.
For example, our car was recently rear-ended here in Denver. At 5 mph. An accident? Yes. A safety risk? Emphatically not.
JohnZ, I think the possibility that women are more likely to have kids in the car would cause them to have more distractions. Try having two screaming, fighting or otherwise children in the back seat of your car and I’m willing to bet you become frustrated, angry, or any other number of emotions that could be very distracting.
my $.02.
Phoenix factors are probably low population density, wide roads, straight grid-patterned layout and good year round weather conditions.
CD – Philadelphia may have a high fraud rate, but it also has the highest (or one of the highest) rates of uninsured motorists too. I doubt that accidents between two uninsured motorists get reported often: why bother?
CD – Philadelphia may have a high fraud rate, but it also has the highest (or one of the highest) rates of uninsured motorists too. I doubt that accidents between two uninsured motorists get reported often: why bother?
Tyler’s point about congestion is spot on. Detroit’s economy is awful, and as a result no one is on the road. My parents live there, and when they visit me in Houston they always are blown away by how many people are on the freeways, saying that our weekend traffic is more dense than some Detroit freeways in rush hour.
Not to mention that with so many folks working for the auto companies, in the Detroit area, a given household owns more cars than one with comparable wealth in another metro, because the cars are cheaper with employee discounts. And “number of cars” (rather than the more appropriate lane-miles) is the denominator, further biasing the results for Southeast Michigan (note the various other Detroit-area cities on the list, too.
bottomofthe9th, Steve Horwitz:
While there may be statistical anomalies that makes Detroit look better than it really is, Detroit drivers really are much better than drivers in most other places.
My theory is this:
1. In Michigan, many people take drivers education as a part of their high school education. I took drivers education and auto safety in high school, for an entire semester, for a real grade. My high school at the time actually had a dedicated auto-track to drive on, we did obstacle courses through cones and barriers, etc.
2. People don’t engage in as much aggressive driving, because they know better than to mess with random strangers.
3. Less youth street racing.
Zubon: White Suburbanite Urban myth. Poor people, who would be the type of people who don’t have insurance, are also the type of people who are also of the demographic (junky cars, dark skin) that cops especially like to pull over and harass. A black man with a junky car is absolutely the last person in America who can get away with driving around with no insurance.
Both traffic density and type/date of road construction are important, I’m sure that once you remove these two factors there’s no longer any meaning to the inter-city data.
I’m surprised how high the overall frequencies are! If I count the family I grew up in, where I have complete data, it’s 5 accidents in 107 years of driving, ages 15-58 (and only 2 in 68 years if you leave out my mom).
Rex Rhino says:
Black cops are more likely to pull over black motorists.
Reference?
How can Phoenix have both AVERAGE accident rates and be the SAFEST city?
Please explain how these two apparently conflicting claims can be true.
It would be useful be able to separate the contributing factors to these statistics. How much of the observed differences are attributed to differences of road architecture, versus variances in local driving culture, versus different local driving laws, versus reporting methodologies.
Allstate claims that a study based on its own policyholders gives a realistic snapshot of what’s happening on America’s roadways. Individual states have different laws governing insurability and uninsured motorist coverage. Is it possible, then, that Allstate’s data represents different levels of riskiness from state to state? If Allstate can cancel the insurance of a DUI in one state but only raise the premium of such a driver in another, then the riskiness of Allstate’s insured population should be higher in the latter state.
One point to note is that Massachusetts cities are excluded because Allstate does not offer insurance products in that state.
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