Desert, Central California Cities Have State’s Best Drivers: Report
Slow-paced, sprawling Visalia ranks first in California and seventh nationally as safest among the 200 largest U.S. cities in terms of car collision frequency.
Allstate Insurance Co. on Tuesday released its 10th annual “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report,” which contains new data rankings and historical rankings from the past 10 years.
According to the report, the average driver in Visalia will experience an auto collision every 12.4 years — an improvement of one month or more for the second consecutive year — and a collision rate 19 percent better than the U.S. average.
Fort Collins, Colo. for the fourth year has held the top spot. According to the report, the average driver in Fort Collins will experience an auto collision every 14.2 years, which is 29.6 percent less likely than the national average of 10 years.
Other top safe driving cities in California were Lancaster, Salinas and Rancho Cucamonga. California’s biggest cities didn’t fare as well in the report. San Francisco drivers were 55.6 percent more likely to be in a collision compared with the rest of the nation, putting it at 190th overall in the U.S. Los Angeles ranked 188th, Long Beach was 141st and San Diego was 112th.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 33,500 car crash fatalities occurred in 2012. Additionally, Allstate research found that 70 percent of vehicles involved in auto claims are considered drivable, which indicates that most claims are the result of low speed (under 35 miles per hour) collisions.