Windsor places 8th in Ontario for worst drivers in the province

Windsor's ranking on a new list of the most dangerous drivers in Ontario comes as no surprise to Jacob Hammoud — the owner of a driving school in the city.

"We talk about this inside our classroom. We show examples of different footage we get from our dash cams when we're doing in-car lessons. We share those with students. Many of them know that Windsor is not the safest place to be on the road," said Hammoud.

According to insurance comparison site MyChoice, dangerous driving habits on Windsor's roadways are not uncommon.

New data, published by MyChoice, shows one in 10 Windsor drivers have an infraction and 12.6 per cent have a crash on their record.

Those percentages were used to compare every city in Ontario that had at least 1,000 insurance quotes in their system since 2020. A grade was given to each city out of five.

With a score of just 1.8, Windsor ranked as the eighth-worst city in the province to drive. The cities on MyChoice's top-10 "dangerous driving" rankings are:

1. Brantford (0.7)

2. Ajax (1.3)

3. Kingston (1.4)

4. Bolton (1.4)

5. Burlington (1.5)

6. St. Catharines (1.7)

7. Barrie (1.7)

8. Windsor (1.8)

9. Hamilton (2.0)

10. Kitchener (2.0)

Toronto scored the highest, with a score of 4.4.

"We think it's beneficial to our users and readers be aware of these findings," said MyChoice vice president of growth Vitalii Starov. "It's really interesting that the smaller municipalities and cities ended up on the list of the most dangerous cities."

His most likely theory as to why a city such as Toronto, which has a population of nearly 2.8 million (according to 2019 census data), is considered safer to drive through than Windsor is because of congestion.

"You stay in traffic for longer and there's more drivers. Therefore, there's less accidents per capita," Starov added.

As for Hammoud, he said Windsor sees a frequent problem in how its residents secure a driving license: students flocking to Chatham to do their road test there.

That can cause problems for new drivers in Windsor, he added, since Chatham has a higher passing rate and its test routes are less difficult.

"If your kid passes their road test here in Windsor tonight, would you trust them to go drive in Toronto the next morning? No one would. So it's not okay for you to take your kid to Chatham just so they can have an easier and quicker road test," said Hammoud.

"Just remember that passing your road test does not make you a responsible driver. That's just the bare minimum. It's as simple as that."