THUNDER BAY -- Local motorists are among the safest drivers in Ontario, according to a recent study.
The city features the second safest drivers in Northern Ontario, second to the Greater Sudbury area, according to the results of the latest Allstate Insurance Ontario Safe Driving Study.
Thunder Bay fell one spot to No. 10 for safest drivers in the province with Brockville reclaiming the No. 1 spot followed by Welland and Chatham.
Most major cities like Toronto and Ottawa ranked near the end of the list, coming in 43 and 42.
The study looked at the number of collision claims between 2010 and 2012 per 100 cars that were filed with Allstate. The number of collision claims for the city was 4.09 per cent per 100 cars.
Brockville came in with 3.06 per cent while Brampton found itself at the bottom of the list with 6.45 per cent.
The Northern region was also ranked the safest in Ontario with 3.87 per cent of collision claims per 100 cars compared to 4.6 per cent in southwest Ontario, 4.73 per cent in the east and 5.63 per cent in the GTA.
The news didn’t surprise Tony Bossio, an Allstate agency manager in Thunder Bay, who said the city’s drivers have been consistently ranked as one of the safest.
“Northern Ontario does have a history of having the safest drivers in the province,” Bossio said.
“We dropped two per cent from the last study. There’s many factors that can contribute to that. It is a two-year study. We use claims that are reported and are actually paid out.”
The study took all claims filed in that time period but doesn’t give reasons for the crash such as if it was caused by a distracted driving checking their cellphone or if someone hit a deer crossing the road.
Despite what some might think, Bossio said the most crashes happen during the summer months not during the winter when the roads are covered with ice and snow.
“The key message that we want to get across is that accidents and collisions can happen in any road conditions,” he said.
“More fatal collisions happen in the summer months. We do want people to be safer when road conditions worsen.”
Thunder Bay Police Service Traffic Sgt. Glen Porter said he was glad the city didn’t do poorly on the study, but believes there’s always room to improve.
“You always want to do better that’s the bottom line whenever you read any of these studies,” he said.
“Can we do better? Can we make it even safer? Traffic is one of those very illusive things where you try a bunch of different things. You rely on your experience and the numbers put out by the statisticians. But at the end of the day, you’re still trying to use the same model that we use all the time – education and enforcement and count on the government to address the engineering."
The types of collisions change with the seasons. This week police have responded to a number of collisions because motorists are forgetting to slow down now that the roads have ice and snow on them, he said.
But in August, the major issue was around speeding. In September the focus was on watching school zones.
With the holiday season coming up the emphasis will be on drinking and driving.
