Might we really be terrible drivers?

“I don’t agree with it,” said Washington State Patrol trooper Will Finn, laughing about the QuoteWizard ranking. “I do think we are good drivers.”

Finn said that in his experience, Washington drivers are generally safe and hold high expectations of each other. When they do mess up, he said, it’s often because they’re impatient.

“Someone (drives) down the shoulder with their lights flashing, (and) they say ‘Well, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment,’ ” Finn said. “Well, so do five other people in traffic, but they’re not driving down the shoulder.”

The two studies differ in how they calculate the “worst” drivers: CarInsuranceComparison.com only used data related to traffic fatalities caused by drunken driving, speeding, careless driving, driving with an invalid license and failure to use safety equipment.

Washington is “close to the national average or better,” said Joshua Barnes, project manager for CarInsuranceComparison.com. “There’s some states that are really bad in one category and really good in another. Washington is good across the board.”

QuoteWizard, on the other hand, included statistics from non-fatal accidents and traffic citations, and this data makes Washington look worse.

“Washington drivers had poor marks in accidents, speeding tickets, and DUI’s,” said Adam Johnson, content manager at QuoteWizard, in an email. “Washington was, however, one of the better states for fatalities.”

Johnson added that despite these rankings, states tend to have similar rates of bad drivers.

“While one state may rank best or worst in a specific category, say accidents, the difference isn’t alarming,” Johnson said.

Despite the debate they may cause, driver safety studies by private companies should be approached with skepticism, said Mark Hallenbeck, director of the WTSC.

“The vast majority of the data analysis that people do in this regard tend to be scientifically awful. … (Sometimes) you want to take that analyst and slap them upside the head,” Hallenbeck said.

Cowlitz County Sheriff Mark Nelson echoed Hallenbeck’s doubts.

“I think you go to any part of the country, people are gonna say ‘people drive crazy around here,'” Nelson said.

Nelson said that in the 45 years he’s driven in the area, he’s witnessed good and bad behavior. Some drivers tend to drive “like they’re playing Grand Theft Auto,” he said, zipping between lanes and rushing to get out in front of other cars.

He said that while people tend to be aware of the dangers of distracted driving, he still sees a lot of people with phones in their hands.

Reducing accident and fatality rates in the state likely will require some proven but unpopular changes, said Angie Ward, a program manager at the WTSC.

“We know that if we were to have sobriety checkpoints, that we would see a serious drop in fatalities,” Ward said. “We know it. (But) they’ve been deemed unconstitutional in Washington.”

Other options include expanded use of speed cameras and more extensive driver education classes requiring more time behind the wheel. Otherwise, Ward said, the public should expect to see nearly 600 people in Washington die each year from fatal accidents.

“That’s the crazy part to me, is that we can count on those (deaths occurring),” Ward said. “And half of those have to do with impairment, alcohol or some drug on board.”

“It sickens me to think that … preventable incidents are gonna happen,” she said.

Ward said she feels hopeful about the future, pointing to Washington’s role as an early-adopter of seat belt laws and projects such as Seattle’s Vision Zero, which aims to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on Seattle streets by 2030.

“We’ve got the right formula here,” she said. “But it’s gonna take some hard work.”