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Johannesburg - Port Elizabeth is South Africa’s safest driving city, according to driving-behaviour analysis in the Discovery Insure 2015 Driving Challenge.
Cape Town drivers ranked second with Bloemfontein in third.
Nelspruit is at the bottom of the insurer's rankings...
2015 Driving Challenge
The results are based on more than 30 000 users who downloaded the Discovery Insure mobile app and are currently participating in the Challenge.
According to Discovery: "This is the second year that the Discovery Insure Driving Challenge has run, allowing Discovery Insure to compare this year’s data to the 2014 Challenge; and the results indicate an improvement in driving behaviour.
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"Overall driving behaviour has improved by more than 10% from 2014, and the greatest area of improvement has been a reduction in phone motion of 22%. In 2014, the data collected from the Discovery Insure Driving Challenge showed that if a driver uses their mobile phone once during a trip, the result is an average of 52 seconds of distracted driving.
"This is equivalent to driving blind for 1km at 60km/h and makes the driver four times more likely to have a crash during that trip."
Discovery Insure Driving Challenge: safest driving cities1 Port Elizabeth
2 Cape Town
3 Bloemfontein
4 Polokwane
5 Johannesburg
6 Pretoria
7 Pietermaritzburg
8 East London
9 Durban
10 Nelspruit
Why are PE drivers the safest in SA?
Port Elizabeth’s greatest areas of improvement are; lower levels of speed coupled with fewer distracted driving events that mostly, the insurer says, "involve phone-use while driving".
The 2015 reports reveals that drivers in large urban areas are more prone to distracted driving with Pretoria and Johannesburg road users the worst offenders of using cell phones behind the wheel.
Global road deaths: How does SA compare?
Improve with age
According to Discovery: "Overall, women score better in driving areas like smooth acceleration, balanced cornering, and not speeding, while men score better in gentle braking and using their cell phones less while driving.
"The driving behaviour of participants in the Discovery Insure Driving Challenge improves with age, with users 50 years and older scoring more than 14% higher than those 30 years and younger."
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The World Health organistion has released this interactive report on South Africa's roads and traffic:
