Study: D.C., Mass. safest places to drive

The District of Columbia and Massachusetts were the safest places to drive in 2012 for fewest fatalities, while the greatest number of deaths tend to be in the Southeast according to a report from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

The looked at total fatalities -- D.C. was lowest at 15 total in 2012, the latest year available -- and also determined fatality rates based on population and per distance driven.

The good news nationwide: Total U.S. fatalities have gone down almost 23% from 2005 to 2012.

"Since 2005, road safety in the U.S. has improved substantially," said Michael Sivak, director of sustainable transportation at UMTRI who led the report that analyzed data for 2005 and 2012, the last year for which data was available.

The bad news was that the safest states appear to be getting safer and the worst performers have been getting deadlier.

Sivak found the fatality rate per one billion miles driven varies greatly. In 2012, the lowest was D.C. at 4.2 followed by Massachusetts at 6.24 deaths. The highest rates were West Virginia (17.63); South Carolina (17.6) and Montana (17.25).

Looking at fatalities per 1,000 people, again the lowest number of deaths at 2.37 is D.C. followed by New York at 5.97. Deadliest states were North Dakota at 24.3 fatalities — a rate 10 times higher than D.C. — followed by Wyoming at 21.34 and Montana at 20.4.

"I expect that there are many factors influencing the patterns that I obtained," Sivak said. "I hope to do a formal analysis of the causative factors in the near future."