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Number of traffic deaths down overall

| Oct 5, 2018 | Motor Vehicle Accidents

According to a recent report published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, the number of deaths across down due to car and other accidents went down between 2016 and 2017.

This is hopeful news, even though the decrease, down to 37,133 fatalities in 2017, was only a modest 1.8 percent. The decrease pales in comparison to the 8.4 percent increase in deaths between 2014 and 2015 and 6.5 percent increase in deaths between 2015 and 2016.

Another hopeful sign was the rate of deaths per miles driven dropped 2.5 percent, even though people actually drove more miles, over 1 percent more miles, in 2017 as opposed to 2016. This number is particularly important since it accounts for the fact that the more people drive, the more that crashes will occur.

Preliminary number for 2018 were also promising in that they showed that a further decrease in traffic deaths for this year was a real possibility.

Not everything in the report was good news. For instance, the number of pedestrian fatalities, particularly in urban areas, remains unacceptably high. With respect to vehicle types, SUVs bucked the downward trend with respect to fatalities, as the number of people dying in connection with an SUV crash increased by 3 percent.

Despite all of the statistics, the bottom line is that each year, one can expect over 35,000 people to die in motor vehicle accidents. Sadly, many of these accidents naturally happen on Georgia’s highways and other roads. When they do happen, the families of victims have legal options available to them for getting compensation for their losses.