Surprise: Deadliest driving weather is rain
Study shows the wet stuff is worse than the white stuff
Snow and ice are not the most deadly driving hazards. Turns out it’s rain.
A new analysis of federal data shows that rain causes more driving fatalities than snow in 39 of the 50 states.
In fact, car accidents are the deadliest weather hazard in the United States — whether caused by rain, snow, fog or wind — and kill about 7,000 Americans a year.
The Auto Insurance Center compiled the report based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data that covered all U.S. fatal car crashes from 2009 to 2013.
The report, published this week, also noted that far more people are still killed as a result of reckless driving, speeding and drunken driving.
“Even though winter conditions do generate their share of accidents, wet conditions are gen- erally more common in many areas.
And drivers are often less cautious than they might be with winter conditions,” said James Koermer, a meteorology professor emeritus at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire not involved in the report.
Sheldon Drobot at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.,
also not part of the study, pointed out that Southern states get more rain than snow. Plus, “rain can make roads rather slick (and) can impair visibility, leading to trouble.”
Snow, however, was a bigger hazard in 10 states in the Mountain West, northern Plains and Upper Midwest: Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.
In North Dakota, snow and rain caused an equal number of fatal crashes, the study said. The study also found that fog leads to a high number of fatal crashes in the South and far West.
“Fog in the southern tier of states can frequently be quite dense in patches,” Koermer said.
The Auto Insurance Center report concluded: “It doesn’t take extreme conditions or intentional recklessness behind the wheel for tragedy to strike. Scary as it sounds, the factors to blame for the worst outcomes on the road are pretty common.”