South African cities with the best drivers

Port Elizabeth drivers are the best in South Africa, according to driving behaviour analysis in this year’s Discovery Insure Driving Challenge.

Cape Town is in second place, and Bloemfontein in third place – while Nelspruit is at the bottom of the rankings.

Discovery said it analysed the driving behaviour of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in SA, with the statistics based on more than 30,000 drivers who downloaded the Discovery Insure app and are currently participating in the challenge.

Driving behaviour has improved by more than 10% from 2014, Discovery found, and the greatest area of improvement has been a reduction in phone motion of 22%.

Read: SA taxis are better at driving than you: expert

In 2014, the data collected from the 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 one kilometre at 60km/h.

Discovery said the analysis revealed that drivers in large urban areas are more prone to distracted driving events. Pretoria and Johannesburg-based drivers use their cellphones more frequently while driving on the roads.

Although Nelspruit drivers scored well on acceleration and braking, they scored poorly for speeding.

The Discovery Insure Driving Challenge ranked the safest driving cities in South Africa as follows:

1. Port Elizabeth
2. Cape Town
3. Bloemfontein
4. Polokwane
5. Johannesburg
6. Pretoria
7. Pietermaritzburg
8. East London
9. Durban
10. Nelspruit

More on driving in SA

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