PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island section of 1-95 is the most dangerous highway in the state, yet compared with the most dangerous highways in every other state, it has the fewest fatalities, despite Rhode Island’s ranking as having the most unsafe drivers in the country, according to reports from Geotab and EverQuote on Thursday.
Rhode Island’s stretch of I-95 has only seen 39 fatal crashes and 40 fatalities in the last 10 years according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cited by Geotab, a company that specializes in global positioning system fleet management and vehicle tracking. When adjusted for daily traffic, the road has just a 0.1 fatal crash rate, significantly less dangerous than other states’ most deadly roads.
For instance, Florida’s US-1 has been host to 1,011 fatal crashes in the last 10 years, accounting for 1,079 deaths.
Still, in EverQuote’s findings, Rhode Islanders placed last in the nation for safe driving practices, speeding on 57 percent of trips, using a phone on 38 percent of driving trips and hard braking on 28 percent of trips. While the Northeast scored poorly in general, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania sat at the bottom of the rankings. Connecticut was 49th, Pennsylvania, 48th. Rhode Island’s speeding habits were worst in the nation, according to EverQuote, an online insurance marketplace.
The study said Montana has the safest drivers in the nation. Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota and South Dakota round out the top five states in the study.
EverQuote’s safe driving survey also had surprising details, such as age having little to do with who speeds.
EverQuote collected data from those who have the EverDrive app from 2016-2017, which measures acceleration and deceleration, phone usage and turning data.
The Geotab study examined the fatal crash rate over a decade, which is the number of fatal crashes per million vehicles traveled on a given highway in a year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Highway Administration.
Chris Bergenheim is a PBN staff writer.
