Skip to Content
Streetsblog California home
Streetsblog California home
Log In
Safety

How Dangerous Is the Driving Around Your Kids’ School?

Photo: Jim Henderson/Wikimedia Commons

Just how bad are the drivers that zoom past your children's school while they're walking to class? A new map from the driving behavior analytics company Zendrive can give you a better read.

The Zendrive mobile app tracks driver behaviors like speeding, hard stops, and usage of mobile devices. Here's how they pulled together the data for the school safety map:

Using our driving safety analytics technology, we mapped out areas around 75,000 schools nationwide and analyzed over 3.4 billion driver miles driven within them, giving us a very broad and accurate safety snapshot of April of 2017. We measured phone use while driving, as well as hard braking and fast acceleration, to get an idea of how safe the roads around schools really are. We came up with safety report cards (A+ through F, of course) for schools, counties, and states across the US.

Overall, Zendrive found that students at urban schools tend to be more exposed to dangerous driving behaviors. Here's where the five safest and five more dangerous schools were located:

The tech company Zendrive used data from drivers' phones to track dangerous driving around schools. Here is an overview. Photo: Zendrive
Image: Zendrive
false

More recommended reading today: The Transportist shares a study affirming that there's "safety in numbers" for people on bikes. And Streets.mn ponders one think tank's informed guesswork about the transition from car ownership to "transportation as a service" might play out.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog California

Monday’s Headlines

California Transportation Commission funds highways as state burns.

March 23, 2026

Metro Plans to Spend Nearly $900M Expanding Freeways Next Year, a 40 Percent Increase

Metro expects to spend $887.1 million on widening the 5, 57/60, 91, 105, and 405 Freeways, and planning for Metro widening of the 5, 14, 71, 605, and other freeways.

March 20, 2026

The Week in Short Videos

Sacramento tax measure, Long Beach bike boulevards, and gas taxes.

Friday’s Headlines

Taxes, HSR, Heat Waves and More...

March 20, 2026
See all posts