Maple, Thornhill among most unsafe places to drive: insurance report

Newmarket is safest community to drive in York Region, study says

Yorkregion.com
December 19, 2018
Lisa Queen

If you’re looking for a safe place to drive in York Region, you may want to avoid Maple and Thornhill, according to a new report.

The two communities made the top 10 list of least safe places to drive in the past 10 years, according to Allstate Insurance Company of Canada’s annual safe driving study.

Maple placed fifth, with a 10-year collision frequency rating of 7 per cent.

That means seven of every 100 cars insured by Allstate in Maple were involved in a collision that resulted in a claim between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2018, the report released Dec. 17 said.

No York Region communities made the top 10 list of safest places to drive over the last decade.

The safest place to drive is Hanmer, a community in northern Ontario, which had a 10-year collision frequency rating of 3.8 per cent.

The worst places to drive, according to the report, were North York, Scarborough and Brampton, which all had ratings of 7 per cent.

Within York Region, Newmarket ranked as the safest community, with a rating of 5.4 per cent, placing it 24th on Allstate’s list.

Stouffville was 28th with a rating of 5.5 per cent, Aurora was 30th at 5.6, Woodbridge was 45th at 6.2 per cent, Markham was 49th at 6.4 per cent and Richmond Hill was 52nd at 6.6 per cent.

No York Region communities made the top five lists of greatest increase or greatest decrease in the frequency of claims made to Allstate.

Greatest decrease honours went to Spruce Grove, Alberta, where collision insurance claims dropped 27 per cent over 10 years.

Kitchener and Brantford had the worst record, with each community seeing a 67-per-cent increase in claims over 10 years.