IN THE LAST WEEK

Driving around Pittsburgh and motoring through New York City hardly sound like similar experiences, but one national study says they have something unfortunately in common: dangerous people behind the wheel.

Everquote Inc., an online insurance marketplace, tracked some 150,000 drivers who used the company’s cell phone app over an 11-month span. Among large metropolitan areas, it found the riskiest drivers are in Pittsburgh and New York, based on five activities: speeding, cell phone use, excess acceleration, hard braking and hard turns.

Pittsburghers were rated most negatively for speeding — they went too fast on 52 percent of trips — and on cell phone use and hard braking, which both occurred on more than one-third of trips.

The local area’s bad report helped drag Pennsylvania down to 48th of the 50 states in the Everquote ranking of safe driving.

Moon police Sgt. Doug Ogden, coordinator of the West Hills DUI Task force, views Pittsburgh drivers as nicer than those elsewhere and not necessarily more dangerous. But they exhibit some of the same risky behavior as motorists everywhere, he said, especially distracted driving.

The rankings coincided with another national dangerous driving study, from the Governors Highway Safety Association. It had no local data but pointed to how driving under the influence of drugs has become as big a concern as drunken motorists — if not bigger. In 2015, for the first time, more drivers tested after fatal crashes had drugs in their system (41.7 percent) than alcohol (37.3 percent).

Marijuana is in the spotlight in Pennsylvania, though not for its use by motorists. Since it was recently legalized for medical therapeutic purposes, a process is underway to eventually make it available to those with prescriptions. More than 500 applications met a March deadline with the state to seek the 12 permits that will be issued allowing legal growth of pot and obtain the 27 permits for those who will be permitted to sell it at dispensaries.

Downtown Pittsburgh continues to be a bustling hub, though questions have arisen about whether it’s becoming saturated after abundant

hotel and residential growth in recent years.

A Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership report found that the hotel occupancy rate dropped off in 2016, to 66 percent from the level of 69 percent in the two prior years. That information coincides with 629 hotel rooms having been added in and near the Golden Triangle last year, while nearly 1,000 more are either under construction or planned.

Meanwhile, apartment occupancy Downtown and in its immediate vicinity has dropped during the past year from 92 percent to 90.3 percent, which goes hand in hand with a modest drop in rental rates. Yet, more than 4,000 more units are in the pipeline.

Officials say there’s plenty of evidence that Downtown activity is thus thriving rather than having peaked.