City's high ranking no accident
Huntsville No. 4 again on Allstate'slist of safe driving
Thursday, May 25, 2006
If you want to live in a safer city to drive in, you can move to Sioux Falls, S.D., Fort Collins, Colo., or Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but that's about it.
Those are the only three cities in the country safer to drive in than Huntsville, according to a study by Allstate Insurance Co. Huntsville was also No. 4 on last year's list.
"I think that's actually very good," said Huntsville police Capt. Henry Reyes.
Reyes is commander of the department's special operations division, which includes the driving under the influence and traffic task forces.
Allstate's report said the average number of years between crashes for a motorist in Huntsville is 12.8 years. The national average is 10 years between crashes.
Reyes said Wednesday that the department in the last year has emphasized several traffic enforcement measures such as checking for seat belt use, drunk drivers and speeders.
"It sounds like it's working," he said.
Reyes said it seems that North Alabama and Huntsville have fewer insurance claims than other areas of the state but have more fatalities than other areas.
The city had a record 43 fatalities in automobile wrecks last year.
"I do believe the aggressive patrolling our guys do helps," Reyes said. "The one thing we're not happy with is the fatalities."
Motorists in Sioux Falls are the nation's safest, and two Tennessee cities are in the top 10, the study shows. Researchers with Allstate found that each motorist in Sioux Falls has on average one accident every 14.3 years - 30 percent better than the national rate.
"I've always known we've had good drivers in our city, but I wasn't sure that we were number one," said Doug Barthel, police chief in the community of about 137,000.
The report analyzed two years of internal crash data to calculate the chance that drivers in 200 of the nation's most populated cities would be involved in an accident.
Factors likely to have helped push Sioux Falls to the top spot include streets that are laid out logically and strong traffic enforcement, Barthel said. Last year, Allstate's study ranked Sioux Falls second and Cedar Rapids first.
Following Sioux Falls on the list were Fort Collins; Cedar Rapids; Huntsville; Chattanooga and Knoxville; Des Moines, Iowa; Milwaukee, Wis.; Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Warren, Mich.
Allstate reported that the period between accidents averaged 12.7 years in Chattanooga and 12.6 in Knoxville.
Motorists in Newark, N.J., were most at risk, according to the study, averaging an accident once every five years. Washington, D.C., was second to last at 5.1 years.
Drivers in Milwaukee, ranked 22nd in population, are likely to experience a crash once every 12.5 years, the best among cities with 500,000 to 1 million residents. Two Tennessee cities held the second and third spots in the ranking for cities of that size. Memphis was No. 2 with 10.9 years between accidents, and Nashville ranked No. 3 with 10.8 accident-free years.
Phoenix ranks the highest for safety among cities with more than 1 million people with a collision likely once every 9.7 years.
Researchers studied about 2 million damage claims defined as any collision resulting in property damage filed between January 2003 and December 2004. That's a broad enough period to limit the influence of external factors such as weather and road construction, researchers said.
A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages.
Allstate planned to give away a tanker full of gas at a Sioux Falls station Wednesday morning to reward residents for their ranking.
© 2006 The Huntsville Times
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