On the first big snowfall of the year, a survey on good driving has ranked Kingston as having one of the safest driving records in the country, according to “the good hands” people in Allstate Insurance Canada’s 2017 Safe Driving Study.
The Limestone City is ranked 22nd out of 93 cities reviewed in this year’s safe driving study.
Collision frequency was used as a barometer, and Kingston had 4.81 crashes per 100 vehicles. In first place was Hanmer, Ont., north of Sudbury, with 3.65 crashes per 100 vehicles, which the study found was the safest driving city among those surveyed this year in Canada.
Wiebke Wilkens is the president and co-founder of Kingston Partners for a Safe Community, an organization which puts on the seatbelt count program and other initiatives.
“With some of the injury prevention programs that we’ve been doing, the seatbelt count — compliance with that and also the handheld devices — we actually saw in the two areas that we always target every year, a slight decrease in compliance with rules this past year, so this is a very, very nice surprise.”
The road to safety is a long one — Kingston is currently studying ways to reduce the rate of local accident-related injuries and collisions through a “Vision Zero” program. It aims to get drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to share the road safely.
The Allstate study also found that the worst accidents involved cyclists and pedestrians, and the highest number of auto collision claims were filed in the months of December, January and February.
Two years ago, Kingston placed 34th in the same Allstate survey.
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