Study IDs Cities With Most Fatal DUI Accidents

San Francisco, CA (July 21, 2014) - The U.S. city with the most fatal DUI crashes per capita has only 210,000 residents -- and the country’s most populous city is near the bottom of the macabre list.

A one-of-a-kind study by consumer advocacy site NerdWallet finds that San Bernardino, Mobile, Riverside, Tulsa, and Lubbock are the cities with the most fatal alcohol-related crashes per capita.

Of the 150 cities surveyed in the study, three California cities -- Glendale, Moreno Valley, and Santa Rosa -- are at the bottom of the list with zero fatal alcohol-related accidents in the years surveyed. New York City also came in near the bottom with the 7th least fatal DUI accidents per capita.

“This country sees approximately 10,000 deaths due to alcohol-related driving crashes each year -- it’s heartbreaking,” says John Kuo, NerdWallet’s Insurance Analyst, in the new report, which used data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NerdWallet’s Insurance Comparison tool.

NerdWallet carried out the study to look into a financial question: How is insurance impacted when a driver gets a DUI?

“The results may surprise many people,” says Kuo. “There’s no uniformity. Insurance impacts vary tremendously.”

After a DUI conviction in Los Angeles, for example, drivers can expect to pay $1,700.43 more for insurance each year. Drivers in Baltimore, on the other hand, face much smaller post-DUI car insurance increases -- just $341.06 per year.

“California is striking,” says Kuo. “It has some of the lowest car insurance rates in the nation -- at least for drivers with clean records. The moment there’s a blemish, insurance carriers in California penalize drivers more than most. A California driver with a DUI faces average rate increases of more than 130%.”

The study found that there’s no direct correlation between the number of fatal alcohol-related accidents in a city and the average post-DUI rate increase.

More details from the study are available here. For more information about NerdWallet, visit www.nerdwallet.com.