Car accident

Car accidents are unintentional damaging events involving automobiles. Car accidents can damage one or more autos, people, or structures. Car accidents—also called traffic accidents, auto accidents, road accidents, road traffic accidents (RTA in many police forces' terminology) and motor vehicle accidents—cause thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of disabilities each year.

Trends in accident statistics

Road toll figures show that car accident fatalities have declined since 1980, with most countries showing a reduction of roughly 50%. This drop appears to confirm the efficacy of safety measures introduced thereafter, assuming that driver behaviour has not changed significantly. In the United States, fatalities have increased slighty from 40,716 in 1994 to 42,643 in 2003.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some expected greater improvements. Several explanations have been proposed:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• The number of cars is increasing, leading to more congested traffic. This argument is disputed—for example, the road toll in Australia is only about half that of the UK, despite the latter country's more than threefold size of population in an area 1/30th of the size.
• A safer car increases the perceived safety level, inducing the driver to go at higher speeds—in fact there is strong evidence to suggest that every safety advantage conferred by technology is eroded by modified driver behaviour.
• Some types of cars may be inherently less safe (see for example SUV)
• More in-car tech toys exist today. These can distract the driver from the road. These include: cell phones, TVs, pagers, portable CD and DVD players, laptop computers, electronic games, computer games, GPS navigators, camcorders, radar detectors, and others.

Whatever the reason, it has been noted that road fatality trends closely follow the so-called "Smeed law" (after RJ Smeed its author), an empirical rule relating injury rates to the square of car ownership levels. The road safety establishment is dismissive of this, preferring to claim the credit for lives saved. An analysis by prof. John Adams can be found .

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~