Pittsburgh drivers are as bad as New York City's — and they're the worst.
That's not just another rant by a weary, rush-hour commuter scrambling to change lanes on the Parkway West; it's the conclusion of a recent report on driving practices across America.
EverQuote Inc., a Massachusetts-based online car insurance comparison company, deemed Pittsburgh the poorest-performing city in its 2017 Safe Driving Report , which examined EverDrive cellphone app data collected during more than 2.7 million vehicle trips spanning 230 million miles in the United States between April 6, 2016, and March 6.
Pittsburgh earned a C-minus, or 71 out of 100, on EverQuote's safe driving scorecard, or about eight points lower than the national average of a 79.
Only New York City had as low a score as Pittsburgh.
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Pennsylvania as a whole performed slightly better at 73 — the third worst score among all 50 states.
During the past 12 months in Pittsburgh, the report said, drivers went faster than the speed limit more than half the time, compared to 36 percent of trips involving speeding nationally.
Vehicles traversing Pittsburgh's hilly, narrow, pothole-pocked roads made a hard brake during 35 percent of trips, compared to 32 percent of trips with sudden stops nationally.
And Pittsburgh drivers made hard turns during 22 percent of trips, compared to 16 percent of trips with sharp and fast maneuvers nationally.
At least one factor unique to the city of rivers and bridges could be a culprit: the so-called "Pittsburgh Left."
That's the name given to the act of a car turning left across oncoming lanes of traffic immediately after the light turns green, even though driving rules require cars turning left to yield to cars going straight ahead.
The act frustrates and irks some drivers — particularly people from outside Greater Pittsburgh who are caught off guard and slam on their brakes to avoid a collision.
Yet some longtime residents — including Mayor Bill Peduto — embrace the Pittsburgh Left as a charming tradition and nod to being polite by letting an extra car get through the intersection.
EverQuote said it produced the national driving report in an effort to "empower drivers to use their scores to improve their driving skills and ultimately make the roads safer for themselves" and the 214 million drivers on U.S. roads.
"We hope this data sheds light on actual driving habits versus people's perception of their driving skills," EverQuote CEO Seth Birnbaum said in a statement.
The Midwest has the safest drivers in the nation, the 2017 report concluded.
Pennsylvania ranked No. 48 out of 50 states, edged out at the bottom only by Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The Keystone State also made the worst five in the categories of speeding, risky acceleration, hard braking and hard turning.
Phone use was not as big a problem here as in the South, with Florida and Louisiana flagged as the worst texting-while-driving offenders.
Drivers in the Northeast tended to speed the most, with more than half their trips involving going 10 mph above the limit, the report said.
The top five states with the best drivers have in common a lot of open land and unincorporated area — Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota and South Dakota, respectively.
Women fared slightly better on the safety scorecard (78 out of 100) than men (77). Male drivers were 5 percent more likely to speed and 23 percent more likely to make a hard turn, the report said.
Natasha Lindstrom is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 412-380-8514, nlindstrom@tribweb.com or on Twitter @NewsNatasha. Trib news partner WPXI-TV contributed.
