Insurance Company Says Washington’s Drivers Are Nation’s Third-Worst

Allstate is back with its annual ranking of US cities by the quality of their motorists, and once again, Washington’s drivers are rated among the nation’s worst. Out of the country’s 200 largest cities, DC was ranked 198th for the second consecutive year, besting only Boston and dead-last Worcester, Massachusetts.

The most important metric in Allstate’s report is the frequency at which drivers get into accidents, and DC’s drivers experience collisions once every 5.1 years, nearly twice as often as the average American driver. But while the District is plainly full of bad drivers, don’t expect the suburbs to get away dent-free. Alexandria came in 193rd place, with drivers crashing their cars once every 5.9 years.

Allstate says there’s no getting around our local drivers’ crummy reputations. The insurance company also weighted its 200 subject cities according to population, density, and weather conditions—Washington did not rank higher than 196th in any scenario.

The East Coast’s major cities are uniformly terrible at driving, too, with Baltimore ranked 195th, Philadelphia 192nd, Atlanta 179th, and New York 155th.

For a safe time on the road, Allstate recommends Fort Collins, Colorado, where drivers go more than 14 years between collisions.

As for DC’s piddly ranking, 198th is pathetic, but its better than where we used to be. Washington occupied the bottom rung for most of the Allstate report’s history before finally being displaced by Worcester and Boston last year. Help the city’s reputation improve even more by not reading this in your car.

Read Allstate’s full report below. You’ll have to scroll down to find Washington.

Find Benjamin Freed on Twitter at @brfreed.

ABD Report 2014

Benjamin Freed

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.