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The Most Dangerous Place to Drive in California

According to the state’s Office of Traffic Safety, the most dangerous spot (according to 2005 stats; takes a while to tally these up and analyze presumably) to drive in California is…

Malibu. It was tops out of 105 cities of its size across the state (and based on vehicle miles traveled). I was a admittedly a bit surprised, but upon further reflection there’s little surprise. It’s not hard to puzzle out the reasons: Speed, booze, and distraction. The Pacific Coast Highway runs right through residential and often crowded areas; although the speed is marked for an already high 45 mph, as the road is engineered to highway standards there’s little immediate incentive for drivers to slow (watch here to see the speed limit compliance patterns of California drivers in action).

Then there’s the alcohol factor — people coming off the beaches are often more than a little liquored up (and let’s not forget that Mel Gibson, who told police he ‘owns Malibu,’ was busted for drunk driving after a night at Moonshadows; the fact that Gibson could have killed someone got rather overshadowed in the hue and cry over his drunken rantings to the cops).

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Cars, Drivers, Risk, Traffic Engineering, Traffic Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

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Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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