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

The Smog President Takes California to Court

I'm not even sure which Trump-made disaster he's trying to distract people from with this latest stunt.

March 13, 2026

The Short Week in Short Videos

Diverters, e-bikes, and a cameo appearance for Joe's kitchen.

March 13, 2026

Friday’s Headlines

Man, this guy really likes smog.

March 13, 2026

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Drivers are Destroying Ktown Mini-Traffic Circle

Some Streetsblog readers are familiar with some of the sad history of the deadly intersection of 4th Street and New Hampshire Boulevard in L.A.’s Koreatown neighborhood. Last year, after a driver killed a 9-year-old, and after volunteers painted guerilla crosswalks, the city of Los Angeles Transportation Department (LADOT) installed official crosswalks and a temporary traffic…

March 13, 2026

Friday Video: Buenos Aires Will Challenge Everything You Think You Know About Buses

The Paris of South America has an amazing bus system — but it doesn't run like North American ones at all.

March 13, 2026

Reading Changes in City Streets

Markings on cities streets can sometimes reveal what used to be there.

March 12, 2026
See all posts