Safe Driving Report: California Does Not Rank Well In 3 of 5 Categories

[profileleft][/profileleft]Whoever you talk to, if the conversation turns towards the quality of local motorists, you’re likely to hear the other person bemoan the people with whom he or she shares the road.  Most people seem to think that where they live has the worst drivers in the world.  Some researchers are actually trying to define which states/regions have the best and worst drivers.  We have seen studies that rank states by number of car accidents.  We have seen analyses that ranked states by the number of drunk driving fatalities.  Traffic safety laws have also been the focal point of statistical rankings.  A new report takes several driving factors into account when ranking the states in terms of safe driving.  The survey comes in the wake of news that traffic fatalities are rising quickly in the United States after dropping for decades.

About the Safe Driving Rankings

EverQuote.com completed a report known as the “EverDrive Safe Driving Report 2016-17.”  Those interested in reading it in full can find it here.  EverDrive is an app that helps motorists track their driving habits so that they can identify problems and correct them.  EverQuote.com reviewed data from its EverDrive app that drivers used from April of 2016 through March of 2017.  Data from 2.7 million car trips totaling more than 230 million miles were used to reach the results.

The data were broken down by jurisdiction into an overall score that was compiled from 5 different categories of problematic driving, including:

• Phone use
• Speeding
• Risky acceleration
• Hard braking
• Hard turning

Each category was scored on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being a perfectly safe driving rating.  Based on the overall rating, the 5 safest jurisdictions in the country in which to drive during the year that was tracked were:

1. Montana
2. Wyoming
3. Alaska
4. North Dakota
5. South Dakota

The five most dangerous jurisdictions in which to drive, listed from worst to 5^th worst, include:

1. Rhode Island
2. Connecticut
3. Pennsylvania
4. New Jersey
5. New Hampshire

The rankings for each of the different aspects of safe driving appear below.  As you’ll also see below, California appears on the ‘worst’ list three times.

Phone Use

If a driver used a phone while driving, the app recorded that act.  Overall, a driver used a phone during 38 percent of the driving trips recorded.  The five best jurisdictions with regards to phone use while driving, listed from best to 5^th best, include:

1. Vermont
2. Montana
3. Oregon
4. New Hampshire
5. Connecticut

The five worst jurisdictions with regards to using a phone while driving, listed from worst to 5^th worst, include:

1. Louisiana
2. Florida
3. Tennessee
4. Mississippi
5. Idaho

Speeding

According to the data compiled, drivers exceeded the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour on 36 percent of the recorded driving trips.  The five safest jurisdictions with regards to speeding, listed from safest to 5^th safest, include:

1. Montana
2. Wyoming
3. Alaska
4. Idaho
5. Kansas

The five most dangerous jurisdictions with regards to speeding, listed from worst to 5^th worst, included:

1. Rhode Island
2. Connecticut
3. New Hampshire
4. Hawaii
5. Pennsylvania

Risky Acceleration

21 percent of all of the driving trips recorded involved the driver accelerating in a risky manner at least once during that trip.  The five jurisdictions in which risky acceleration happened the least, listed from least to 5^th least, include:

1. Montana
2. Vermont
3. Mississippi
4. Wyoming
5. North Dakota

The five jurisdictions in which risky acceleration occurred most often, listed from most often to 5^th most often, include:

1. California
2. New Jersey
3. Pennsylvania
4. New York
5. Nevada

Hard Braking

The data revealed that drivers hit the brakes hard at least once during 32 percent of all of the trips recorded.  The five jurisdictions with the least amount of hard braking, listed from least to 5^th least, include:

1. Montana
2. Vermont
3. Wyoming
4. North Dakota
5. South Dakota

The five jurisdictions in which hard braking occurred most often, listed from most often to 5^th most often, include:

1. California
2. New Jersey
3. New York
4. Pennsylvania
5. Georgia

Hard Turning

Hard turns are those that occur at higher speeds than one would consider customary and those that occur suddenly.  In terms of safe driving, hard turns occurred on 16 percent of the trips recorded by the app, which is the lowest percentage of any of the problematic behaviors used in compiling these rankings.  The five jurisdictions in which the fewest hard turns occurred, listed from fewest to 5^th fewest, include:

1. Maine
2. Montana
3. Wyoming
4. Alaska
5. Mississippi

The five worst jurisdictions, or those in which the highest number of hard turns occurred, listed from most to 5^th most, include:

1. West Virginia
2. Pennsylvania
3. Nevada
4. California
5. New Jersey

Safe Driving and Your Habits

There are different ways to measure safe driving.  The variables used in this analysis may have led to different results than the results from other surveys, but the bottom line is that too many motorists have acquired too many bad habits.  Safe driving is all about eliminating bad habits or at the very least minimizing them.  Every now and then, it makes sense for every driver to take stock of his or her driving norms.  Doing so could make the difference at some point between being involved in a car accident and arriving at the destination safely.

How San Diego Car Accident Lawyers Can Help

Even if you take the time to evaluate your own driving habits somehow, you cannot control the actions of other drivers.  As such, it will remain a possibility that you will be involved in a crash that was not your fault and despite the fact that you were engaged in safe driving.  If this does happen to you or someone you love, you need to seek the help of San Diego car accident lawyers who have been standing up for the rights of wrongfully injured clients for more than a decade.  Contact Gomez Trial Attorneys today for a free case evaluation.