TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Bakersfield may have earned a reputation of having relatively safe drivers, according to an insurance study and a sampling of people Thursday at Valley Plaza.

An Allstate Insurance report rates Bakersfield as being in the top group of safe cities in California based on the likelihood of a person having an accident.

Bakersfield is seventh out of 44 cities measured in California. It's just behind Fresno, Lancaster and Palmdale and not too far behind the top cities of Salinas and Santa Rosa, the report says.

Still, all California cities except the top two are below the national average of 10 years per person between accidents. Bakersfield is at 9.7 years while Salinas is at 11.4 years.

Evidence of improvement in Bakersfield? Through Sept. 1 of this year the number of fatal crashes is 52 percent less than last year -- 42 in 2009 and 20 this year, California Highway Patrol spokesman Robert Rodriguez said.

And since 2006, the overall number of crashes in the area covered by the Bakersfield CHP office dropped more than 25 percent between 2006 and 2009, Rodriguez said. That includes freeway and county-maintained roads in the Highway 99 valley corridor between Mettler and Delano, the Lake Isabella area and Highway 58 west of Tehachapi.

"Apparently we are doing something right," Rodriguez said. He added, "There are good drivers in every city just as there are bad drivers everywhere."

But how does the phrase "Bakersfield has relatively safe drivers" strike people?

Six of eight people interviewed at the Food Court at Valley Plaza agreed Bakersfield has some pretty good drivers, especially compared to Los Angeles, which ranks 42nd in Allstate's list of 44 California cities.

Arturo Renteria, 45, a district manager for a jewelry company who drives 70,000 miles a year all over Southern California, said Bakersfield drivers "are not as desperate to be on the road as those in Los Angeles. They (LA drivers) will cut you off. They don't care."

Agreeing with that was 31-year-old Deshawn Stallings, who recently moved to Bakersfield from Oxnard. He called LA drivers "horrible" and said Bakersfield was as good as anywhere else.

The only problem Renteria noticed in Bakersfield is people "distracted because they are on cell phones."

Gail Dean, 59, of Stallion Springs focused that problem with "young people with cell phones who don't pay attention." She and her husband, Pat, 61, said Bakersfield is the big city compared to where they live and they feel "everybody seems to be in a hurry" and people "drive a little bit too fast."

Courtesy is not always present in Bakersfield, the couple said, as evidenced by one woman who swore at them in a note because the woman couldn't open her SUV door all the way in a parking lot.

But Jeff Godfrey, 62, of Lake Isabella, who drove 30,000 miles a year to his Elk Hills job before he retired, said Bakersfield has safe and courteous drivers. He attributes that to standards set by oilfield companies.

"People give me space and let me in and out," he said. He believes Bakersfield drivers adjust their speed to conditions, so if they all go 75 on the freeway, it doesn't seem fast.

George Ortiz, 28, of Bakersfield works for a drilling company in Belridge. "I've been to a lot of places and I would say, yes, Bakersfield is safe by comparison," he said. "Here they are more willing to let you get in a lane."

Chelsea Crabtree, 22, of Bakersfield, and her friend, Amanda Valenzuela, 29, of Shafter, agreed that even though Bakersfield is so spread out, people can get where they're going relatively quickly. That reduces the need to drive unsafely, they said.

Another study found California has one of the worst road systems in America for maintenance, congestion and widths. All those interviewed at Valley Plaza agreed California needs a lot of improvement, through Godfrey said Texas is worse.

Stallings was the lone voice to praise California roads: "I think Caltrans gets to it (fixing roads) pretty quickly."