The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has compiled data with its Fatality Analysis Reporting System over the past decade to help people in Georgia and the rest of the U.S. better understand how and why traffic collisions occur. To make sense of these numbers, researchers have broken the data down into various groupings, so drivers everywhere can better protect themselves from those on the road who drive too fast.
The most dangerous time of day
According to the NHTSA, light conditions play a major role in the likelihood of a car crash due to speeding. 30.1% of lethal car crashes that occurred at dusk involved speeding.
The reason why dusk is a particularly dangerous time to be on the road is due to a confluence of factors. The time of day when sunset occurs is a transitional period, and people’s eyes are often still adjusting. Drivers also might not have turned their headlight on yet, and the glare of the sunlight might shine directly into drivers’ eyes.
Accidents related to speeding are also common once darkness has completely fallen. In situations where there are street lights, 29.9% of fatal car accidents on dark roads involve speeding. This is compared to 28.4% with no street lights or unknown conditions.
Roads to watch out for
Deadly collisions when speeding is involved tend to happen on local and collector roads, according to the NHTSA FARS data. Local roads filter out into bigger traffic systems, and they also tend to be roadways without much traffic running through them.
Collector roads connect counties with rural areas, and these allow drivers to directly access neighborhoods. This unfortunately means that these types of accidents frequently happen near neighborhoods.
The NHSTA also found that age had a significant bearing on how likely someone was to be in a speeding-related car crash. Anyone who is under the age of 34 is statistically more likely to speed up and cause a fatal accident. Teenage drivers and those between the ages of 15 and 24 were especially found to put others at risk by speeding.