Fall isn’t Great for Auto Safety

Automobile-related deaths are a nasty side-effect of having cars. If you have never lost a loved one due to a car-related circumstance, or have not been in a crash yourself, you likely take for granted the extreme danger we all place ourselves in when we hop in our cars daily and hit the road. Make no mistake - these are giant pieces of metal careening across roads where other giant pieces of metal are torpedoing in the opposite direction. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and there’s a good reason why Americans die on the road every year at astounding numbers.

If you had to guess the time of year that most automobile crashes occur, when would that be? Some would opt for January, attributing New Year’s Day (folks stumbling home from a night out on New Year’s Eve) as an obvious choice. Or perhaps July 4th, inciting the same level of drinking and disorderly conduct. Another good choice might be around Thanksgiving or Christmas when parties and icy conditions combine in a deadly fashion. These are all intelligent choices, and indeed do, sadly enough, produce a host of auto-related fatalities. But the deadliest time of the year is the month of September.

According to the transportation analysis division of Sivak Applied Research, from 2009 to 2022 roughly 12.3 traffic fatalities (per billion miles driven) were registered in September. October was a close second at 12 while March was the least risky for the year. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety dug a bit deeper into the numbers and concluded the same over a completely different set of dates (1998 - 2017). In fact, their fatality figures for September during that 19-year stretch were even higher - 14.2.

To put this into context, the number of US traffic deaths has been falling in recent years. While 35,000 plus still die annually, that number was much higher a decade ago. In general, traffic fatalities are at their highest in the summer and fall months, and weekends are infinitely worse than weekdays. A given Saturday in September registers an average of 139 lives lost, for example, while a Tuesday in the same month registers an average of 89. But this all begs the question - why September and October?

Some researchers posit that September is when summer is winding down, and while people are still driving more (due to the pleasant weather), it is also a month when it begins to get darker sooner. Labor Day weekend is also another potential issue, notching almost as many deaths as July 4th. Whatever the reason, the data seems to suggest that September and October have been deadly car months since 1998, and likely before. Take care on the highway this fall; the stats don’t lie.