Curious about what causes car accidents? The following facts and statistics will give you a better understanding of the various reasons people get into car crashes.
1.. Deer are involved in more than 500,000 vehicle collisions each year, killing around 500 people. This makes them deadlier than any other wild animal. (Miller, 2004)
2. The National Transportation Safety Board says that 25% of fatal collisions with bicyclists occur when a car tries to overtake a bicyclist between intersections.
Running red lights
1. Running red lights causes an estimated 95,000 crashes and 1,000 deaths in the United States each year.
2. Crashes from people running red lights continue trending upward, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. 939 people died in such crashes in 2017, a 7% increase over the prior year and a 28% jump from where they were 5 years earlier. (Foldy, 2019) Around half of those killed were in the other vehicle, and 5% were pedestrians or cyclists.
Drowsy driving & its role in car accidents
The National Department of Transportation estimates that drowsy driving is responsible for 1,550 fatalities and 40,000 nonfatal injuries every year in the U.S. (Weinhouse, 2015)
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A recent study found people with sleep apnea are 7-times more likely to get into a car accident, since it results in daytime grogginess. (Jacobs, 1998)
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The NTSB estimates that fatigue contributes to as many as a quarter of all transportation accidents; whether car, truck, bus, train or plane. (Weinhouse, 2015)
4. Daylight savings time seems to increase the risk for car accidents. A study of motor vehicle accidents from 1990-2017 found 6% more fatal accidents in the week following the clock change to move up daylight savings time, presumably due to an increase in fatigue. The increase averaged 9% in the hours before noon. (Bakalar, 2020)
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