Cars by the numbers

Driving style varies from one part of the country to another--no great insight there. Travel by car long enough and you'll see: For example, I've always believed that Chicago drivers are surprisingly safe drivers--except that they do everything at roughly twice the ground speed of safe drivers elsewhere.

And in Indiana you'll quickly learn, when your traffic light turns green, to count "one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi" before entering the intersection, so that all the cross-traffic cars that began accelerating from up to a block away when their light turned yellow will have a chance to clear out of the intersection.

On the other hand, if you want to move from impressionistic anecdotes to hard numbers, you were often left empty-handed. But no more:

GMAC Insurance administered a 20-question test -- similar to a traditional licensing test at the local DMV – to 5,288 drivers and released the results last week. Of those tested, nearly 10% were unable to answer enough questions correctly to achieve a passing score of 70.

The good news--sort of good news--at least good news from my geographically selfish perspective--is that Oregon drivers scored highest, and Pacific Northwest drivers highest as a region:

Drivers in Oregon […] averaged a score of 90.6, and the Northwest overall had the most knowledgeable drivers, with failure rates below 7%.

Scariest statistics:

If the test results are any guide, America's pedestrians are in deep, deep trouble.

• 20% of drivers do not know that a pedestrian has the right of way at a marked or unmarked crosswalk.


• 1 in 3 drivers don’t usually stop for pedestrians – even if they’re in a crosswalk or at a yellow light.


• One-third admit they speed up to make a yellow light even when pedestrians are in the crosswalk.

More frightening? Drivers in the heavily urbanized Northeast scored the worst.

And the results of a large-scale study by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute gives more information for handicapping how your driving habits affect the odds of being in a crash, for example:

• Dialing your cell phone while driving (one of my big personal irritants) nearly triples your odds of a crash (odds ratio: 2.79). But, on the other hand,


• Applying makeup (odds ratio: 3.13) and reading (odds ratio: 3.38) while driving are both more dangerous even than dialing your cell--although I'm not sure we really needed to have the numbers crunched to know that.


• And dealing with an insect in the car (odds ratio: 6.37) while you're driving is far more dangerous than any of those other factors.

But you probably knew that last one, didn't you?