For people who are said to love automobiles, Los Angeles residents sure put a lot of dents in them. An insurance company's annual 'Best Drivers Report' shows this center of car culture also is one of the nation's collision capitals, with drivers in the L.A. area crashing about twice as often as motorists in the United States' safest cities. Allstate's ranking of 193 U.S. cities based on the frequency of auto-insurance claims puts L.A. down in a numerical ditch at No. 183. Among the few towns faring worse is nearby Glendale (No. 191 in this statistical Demolition Derby). Better, but still below average, are Southern California neighbors Thousand Oaks (No. 109 in the fender-bender file), Long Beach (No. 121), Santa Clarita (No. 135), Torrance (No. 150) and Pasadena (No. 160). Better than average -- and much improved -- are Palmdale (No. 73) and Lancaster (No. 75). Allstate spokesman Jim Kapthor said the Illinois-based company does not use the data to calculate insurance rates. 'We use it for statistical purposes and to create this conversation' about traffic safety, Kapthor said. Part of the resulting chatter, naturally, comes in the form of protest from people who've been driven to distraction by the characterization of their city as some kind of giant bumper-car ride. 'Yes, we disagree with the information they provide,' said Sgt. Tom Lorenz, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department. Sticking up for his town's citizens -- talk about a defensive driver -- Lorenz noted that the Allstate report assigns collisions to the cities in which they occur, not to the cities the drivers live in. Lorenz complained also that the Allstate data says nothing about who's to blame for the crashes. 'It makes it look like our residents are bad drivers,' Lorenz said. 'But most people who get tickets in this city are people who don't live in this city. 'We're the third-largest city in (Los Angeles County). We have one of the largest malls in the country. We have tons of commuters.' Even if Glendale doesn't take the statistics themselves too seriously, city leaders are serious about promoting safe driving, Lorenz said. 'We need to improve,' he said. 'We won't disagree with that.' The typical driver in Glendale has a collision once every 5.9 years, according to the Allstate report issued last week, based on data from 2007-2008. The corresponding driver in Los Angeles crashes once every 6.9 years, Allstate said. Contrast that with Fort Collins, Colo., crowned by Allstate as 'America's Safest Driving City,' and Chattanooga, Tenn., and Boise, Idaho, the closest challengers. Drivers in Fort Collins go 14.5 years between accidents. In Chattanooga and Boise, it's 12.9 years. It's easy to see a pattern: Most of the cities with high collision rates are crowded metropolitan areas like Los Angeles. Most of the safest places are rural places with fewer cars and less to bump into. New York is the 159th least-safe city to drive in, Chicago 167th, San Francisco 185th. The safest city in California is Salinas, which ranks 15th in the nation. The report comes three months after GMAC Insurance released a list ranking California 48th among 50 states and the District of Columbia in knowledge of the rules of the road (based on driving-test results). At least one area in Los Angeles County has reason to honk its horns in celebration -- the Antelope Valley. Palmdale, 92nd in the 2009 rankings, and Lancaster, 94th, each moved up 19 places this time. Lt. Donald Downton of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in Lancaster gave credit to stepped-up patrol of high-speed highways, including State Route 14. Downton said six motor units are involved in traffic enforcement in Lancaster, most of them added since 2003. The city's 138 collisions in July (45 causing injuries) were down from 184 (55 with injuries) a year earlier. Downton said because drivers see law-enforcement vehicles more often, 'People drive slower now.' Kapthor, the Allstate spokesman, said the national accident rate has held steady since the first of these reports in 2005, with the average U.S. motorist going about 10 years between crashes. 'Human error is the No. 1 cause of automobile accidents,' Kapthor said. 'Because of that, we all can make some simple changes that can improve the accident rate. We can eliminate distractions behind the wheel. We can drive according to the road conditions. We can steer clear of road rage. 'Those (cities) that have an accident frequency that's better than the national average, they should be grateful for that. Those that (aren't as good), just take this as a wake-up call.' 