Top Causes of Car Accidents
Every year thousands of people are injured and killed in car accidents. According to the Institute of Insurance Safety a total of 35,092 people were killed in car accidents in 2015. It’s decreased by more than 7,000 since 2006 but nonetheless, that is still far too many fatalities. The increased in public awareness, implemented government decrees, safer roads, and advancing technology in safety measures have contributed much to the small decline. But accidents still do happen.
What could be the main causes of this reality?
The institute says that speeding is one of the most common, contributing to a total of 108,554 car accidents. That accounted for nearly 30% of all car accidents during that time. Of the nearly 10,000 speed related deaths that occurred in 2015, nearly half (48%) happened on roads where the speed limits were higher than 55 mph.
Drunk driving has resulted in nearly 113,000 deaths over the past decade, contributed to nearly 30% of car accident fatalities. The CDC said that there are 28 fatalities every day due to overindulgence of alcohol.
A distracted driver on the road is potentially dangerous. Talking on cell phones, texting, eating, talking to passengers, and adjusting the radio/climate controls are common distracted driver behaviors that lead to fatalities. From 2010-2014, drivers who were distracted while driving caused nearly 4.5 million car crashes.
It’s responsible for nearly 16% of all car accidents. That’s according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And using the cell phone while driving is the biggest distraction of all, now on the rise, and mainly contributed by the 20-29 age group at 39%; followed by the 30-39 age at 19%.
Weather-related accidents are another – driving under adverse conditions such as rain, snow, fog, etc. There were 1.2 million such accidents from 2004-15, accounted for 22% of all car accidents. In that span, more than 400,000 were injured, more than 5,000 fatal. Wet pavements and rain were the main causes.
Red light accidents claimed the lives of about 700 people from 2010-14. The National Coalition for Safer Roads did a study in 2013 looking at red light violations and found some interesting patterns. Such as, 30% of beating the red light behavior happens in the afternoon, Fridays of the week have the highest number of violations and Sundays the lowest. Lastly, one other cause of car crashes is driver fatigue, which represented 5.9 million car accidents during 2005-09, or 83,000 drowsy driver-accidents a year.
Friendly Reminders from Seattle
Based on the above statistics, it is as clear as daylight what we ought not to do or what to avoid. Your auto body shop in Shoreline have seen its fair share of road accidents in our many years of service. We always make sure to give friendly reminders. See us for your needs.