The federal government has released its final automobile crash data for calendar 2013, for all drivers and all categories (not just teens). I’m sure dozens of organizations are analyzing the data, but one set of statistics jumped out at me: from 2012 to 2013 in the U.S., fatalities declined from 33,782 to 32,719, a three percent decrease, but total crashes increased from 5,615,000 to 5,687,000, a 1.3 percent increase.
The so-called FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) doesn’t comment on the increase in crashes (an increase of almost 200 crashes per day!), but I wonder if these two numbers, compared, demonstrate that our cars are getting safer, but there is more distracted driving? What else would explain 72,000 more crashes but 1,000 fewer deaths? Just wondering.
