Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie.Most of the drivers around this region — whether they’re from Maryland, Virginia or the District — just plain suck. This is not new.
But a new report released by Allstate Insurance Corporation indicates that Washington, D.C. is, in fact, the hellish nexus of American traffic. Washington — probably because the city, aside from its own crazy drivers, attracts a nightmarish mish-mash of drivers from two other jurisdictions who also have terrible drivers — finished dead last in the report’s rankings. Some other fun facts from the report: D.C. boasts a 95.5 percent “relative accident likelihood” against the national average and an average of 5.1 years between accidents. (In comparison, the top city on the list, Fort Collins, Colorado, has a negative-31.2 percent accident likelihood and averages 14.5 years between accidents.) Looking for sympathy? Don’t look too far: Baltimore finished but one slot ahead of D.C. in 192nd place. Arlington (174th) and Alexandria (177th) didn’t fare spectacularly either. Here’s a PDF with the complete results.
Of course, like I said, this is just the same old, same old for those of us who live here — after all, D.C. finished dead last in this exact same report last year. No one can ever accuse us of being inconsistently bad drivers, I guess.