Winston-Salem Ranked Safest
Driving City in North Carolina

Department of Transportation May 24, 2006      Contact: Stan Polanis, 727-2707

Winston-Salem’s drivers are ranked the safest among North Carolina’s six largest cities, according to the 2006 “Allstate America's Best Drivers Report” released today by Allstate Insurance Co.

According to the report, the average driver in Winston-Salem will experience a traffic accident every 10.3 years. This ranked the city 52nd overall on Allstate’s list of the largest 200 cities in the United States. Rankings for other North Carolina cities are: Fayetteville, 60; Greensboro, 77; Durham, 95; Raleigh, 120; and Charlotte, 168.

The rankings are based on auto-damage claims the insurance company received from January 2003 to December 2004. The results were adjusted for such factors as weather and road conditions.

Stan Polanis, the head of the city Department of Transportation, said that the city drivers and the Winston-Salem Police Department deserve credit for the ranking.
But, he also said, the city’s 19-year Safety Improvement Program has helped, too. Under that program, the Transportation Department studies accident locations, looking for patterns of accidents that could be reduced by making changes in signs, traffic signals or road markings.

“We routinely keep 200-plus locations a year under study,” Polanis said. “Whenever you see different people making the same mistake at a particular location, you start to wonder if there isn’t something out there in the driving environment that is contributing to the accident rate.”

Since the start of the program in 1987, the Safety Improvement Program has completed studies on 578 locations and reduced targeted accidents by 50 percent. The overall accident rate at these locations has been reduced by 16 percent, injuries are down 29 percent and property damage was reduced by an estimated $6 million, based on statistics compiled for each location three years before modifications and three years after.

Sioux Falls, S.D. was ranked first in the report, with the average driver there going 14.3 years between accidents. The national average is 10 years. The full list is available online at wwwAllstate.com. For more information about the Safety Improvement program, call Stan Polanis at 727-2707 or go to the Department of Transportation website.

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