Glendale ranks low — again — in report on the nation’s best drivers
Once again, Glendale ranked low on a list of the top 200 cities with the best drivers in the United States, according to a report released on Tuesday.
The city is the 196th safest city in the country to drive in, according to Allstate Insurance’s annual ranking.
It’s the same ranking Glendale received in last year’s report. In 2016 and in 2017, it was in 195th place.
According to Allstate, the insurance company based the rankings on how frequently its customers file claims between collisions.
It found the national average between filing claims was 10.57 years.
In Glendale, it was 5.3.
Los Angeles drivers are considered the 195th best in the county, averaging 5.8 years between claims, while the people of Brownsville, Texas, are considered the best drivers with 14.9 years between claims.
While the ranking is billed as an account of the country’s best drivers, Glendale officials think it’s misleading and take issue with Allstate’s methodology.
Dan Bell, a city spokesman, said the fact that Allstate uses its own customer base severely limits its sample size and doesn’t take into account the difference in populations among the 200 cities.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Bronwsville has an estimated population of 183,299 people, while Glendale has 203,054. An estimated 4 million people reside in Los Angeles.
“I’d take their report with a grain of salt,” Bell said.
In addition to ranking the best drivers in the United States, Allstate looked at the top 15 riskiest roadways in the country where collisions are likely to occur.
The 134 Freeway, which runs through Glendale and Burbank, is listed among them.
Like its best driver rankings, the company looked at claims from its customers to determine which roadways were considered risky.
The California Office of Traffic Safety keeps its own figures and rankings on collisions in the state, drawing on numbers from several government agencies, including the California Highway Patrol and the state’s Department of Transportation.
The Office of Traffic Safety grouped Glendale with 57 other cities with populations between 100,001 and 250,000 people.
For overall traffic safety, the city ranked 52 out of 58 cities.
Unlike Allstate’s system, a higher ranking signifies a higher level of safety.
An area where Glendale ranks poorly, according to the Office of Traffic Safety, is collisions involving elderly pedestrians.
The city took the No. 2 spot in the category, meaning it had the second highest number of collisions involving people 65 and older among similar-sized cities in California.
