Every year, Allstate crunches its claims data from the country's 200 largest municipalities, does a little arithmetic, then releases a ranked list showing which cities have the best drivers and, by extension, which have the worse. The insurance company just released its report for 2012, and the answer to your burning question is yes, Sioux Falls is still the nation's safest place to drive.
Dallas? As you'd expect, not so much. The city, for the second year in a row, came in at No. 167. Drivers here -- at least those with Allstate insurance policies -- are 32.8 percent more likely to get in a wreck than your average U.S. driver. The typical amount of time between accidents is 7.5 years.
But looking at it another way, Dallas actually does relatively well. Of cities with more than a million people, it's the sixth safest. Flipping the list on its head, Dallas has the 34th worst drivers in the country, which flies in the face of everything anybody has ever said about Dallas traffic, not to mention that time last month I was rear-ended and spun into a concrete wall on the Mixmaster.
I have to say, Dallas, you can do better. Remember how everything's bigger in Texas? That goes for our cowboy hats and our Cowboys stadiums, and it should also go for our car wrecks. Washington, D.C., of all places, the epitome of everything that Texas is not, is 33 slots ahead of us, which is frankly embarrassing. So let's start driving a little more like Texans and see if we can't top those liberal Washington elites by the time next year's list rolls around. Just make sure to drive very carefully around bikes.
