Common Causes for Car Accidents

There are many causes of car accidents, but one factor is involved in just about all of them. Too many car accidents are the result of a lapse in simple, everyday intelligence. Excess speeding, road rage, inattentiveness, cell phone chatter and many other accident causes share that common factor.

1. Speeding: There are vital reasons for speed limits, but anyone who knowingly exceeds them is taking a chance of causing an accident. Speeding drivers are just not using their basic intelligence, because they know very well what the consequences could be. Young drivers are particularly vulnerable to speed-caused accidents. According to the American Automobile Association, car accidents are the cause of four out of ten deaths of Americans between ages 16 and 20.

2. Drunk driving: According to alcoholalert.com, of the 40,000 deaths from automobile accidents in each of recent years, more than 15,000 are caused by drunk drivers. Older people who are alcoholics or drink too much on occasion cause car accidents. However, most drivers who binge drink and cause car accidents are young males under 25 years of age when driving at night. The reasons, all examples of lapse of judgment, include drag racing, showing off, inexperience and, above all, excess drinking.

3. Elderly drivers: Young drivers are not the only ones who cause accidents. Elderly drivers contribute their share. Fading eyesight, slowing down of reflexes and mental confusion all contribute to accidents. Many states still issue drivers’ license renewals to elderly drivers who couldn’t pass a simple eye exam or a test of quick responses.

4. Road rage: This traffic-fed blind fury, often due to temporary abandonment of judgement, is one of the leading causes of car accidents. A driver cuts in front of you, or makes an obscene gesture in your direction or you believe is simply driving too slowly or too fast. It becomes a challenge, and you suddenly feel you have the authority to take matters into your own hands. When those hands are on the wheel of a car going 55 or more miles an hour, they make you judge and jury over the other driver. According to AAA statistics, of the 50,000 U.S. highway deaths each year, some ten to 20 percent of them involve road rage.

5. Inattentiveness: Once upon a time this was a minor cause of car accidents, when a driver reached for a radio button or was reading a road map. With the explosion of miniaturized electronic communications devices and services, including cell phones, video phones, pagers, iPod, texting, Twitter and dozens of other distractions, inattentiveness to what’s on the road around the driver has become a major cause of car accidents. A recent study at the University of Utah found that a person behind the whell who is texting is six times more likely to be involved in an accident than other drivers.

According to edgarsnyder.com, on every day of the year, nearly a million U.S. drivers on roads and highways are texting, answering or making pagings and talking on cell phone while behind the wheel. This resulted in half a million car accidents, more than 5,000 of them involving fatalities.

Other than the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, most car accidents are preventable. Safe driving on highways requires intelligence, keen awareness, sobriety, respect for the law and consideration for other drivers and passengers who must share the road with you.