What Are the Most Common Causes of Car Accidents in Missouri?

Car accidents are, unfortunately, common in Missouri. The latest statistics from 2021 indicate a 2% rise in deaths across the state from the year before and a steady increase in serious injuries from 4,573 in 2015 to nearly 5,900 in 2021. If you’ve been injured in a crash, a personal injury attorney in Springfield should be one of your first calls.

What Are the Most Common Causes of Car Accidents in Missouri?

Most car accidents fall into one of three categories: driver error, driver fatigue, or third-party causes. The most common cause of a car accident is a failure in duty of care by a driver. Duty of care is a legal term that refers to the requirement that all people have to exercise reasonable caution to protect other people in whatever circumstances they find themselves in. As a driver, the duty of care requires a person to follow the rules of the road, keep their vehicle in good repair, and stay alert and unimpaired whenever they are behind the wheel. The vast majority of accidents happen because of a failure in one of these areas.

Driving Impaired

In Missouri, alcohol was involved in 515 of the 920 road deaths caused in 2021, and it’s worth noting that Missouri’s traffic fatality rate is much higher than the national average: 1,082 fatal crashes took place just in 2022. In Missouri in 2022, 4,416 total crashes involved alcohol in some way. Nationwide, alcohol is a factor in more than 40% of all automobile fatalities, and that’s because alcohol diminishes a person’s ability to react quickly and make good decisions. It can also interfere with vision.

Many people make the fatal mistake of thinking that so long as their blood alcohol level is under the legal limit, it’s fine to drive around “buzzed.” This is dangerous on two counts. First, feeling “buzzed” is an indication that you are already feeling an effect from the alcohol: it is changing the way you react and think. Everyone processes alcohol at a different rate and in a different way, so what might be safer for one person might still be very dangerous for another. The second problem is that there’s a very fine line between “buzzed” and fully drunk. It’s all too easy to cross over that line, and again, individual reactions to alcohol play a factor here. Some people are fine to drive after one standard size drink, while others will be too impaired with just a single shot or beer.

Driving Distracted

This is actually the most common type of driver error, though it is not the most fatal. That honor goes to impaired driving, as we saw above. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not serious. Lots of minor accidents are caused in parking lots or at traffic lights that are not fatal simply because of the slow speeds; but when distracted driving happens at speed, it can be every bit as deadly as driving drunk.

Technically, distracted driving happens whenever the driver is distracted in any way. This could be from having a discussion or argument with a passenger, reading a billboard on the side of the road, eating, or even fiddling with the climate control in their vehicle. But the reality is that the worst distracted driving is definitely happening with the use of phones. In 2017, 25% of car accidents were caused or made worse because a driver was using a cell phone. Here’s the reality: the average time it takes you to read a text is five seconds. In five seconds, if you are going 50 miles an hour, you travel almost 150 yards, and that’s a lot of space for something to go wrong.

Why?

The main reason for distracted driving is that human beings greatly overestimate their ability to multitask. We value multitasking because it gives us the false impression that we are getting many things done and being very efficient with our time. In reality, studies have shown over and over that the human brain is incapable of doing two important things at once. To the person doing it, it feels as if two things are being done at once, but in reality, the brain is just very quickly switching back-and-forth from one to the other task.

As it does so, the brain automatically rejects what it has decided is “extraneous” information with both tasks. The result is that we think we’re doing two things at once, but in reality we are doing two things one at a time, and both of them poorly. When you are driving, it is absolutely essential to see hazards as early on as possible so you have a moment to think about how to react to them. If your brain is distracted with another task, it may very well simply filter out the information you need to see to avoid an accident.

Inexperience Leading to Bad Decisions

Again, drivers tend to grossly overestimate their own skill behind the wheel, and, ironically, the less experienced the driver, the more likely they are to overestimate their driving abilities. Sometimes, the problem is just a lot of inexperience, and this is why car insurance rates are so much higher for young people. Young people simply do not have the years of driving experience that older people do and are therefore more likely, all things being equal, to make a bad decision.

But, all things are not always equal! Many drivers who should be more experienced continually make very bad decisions for other reasons. These include the decision to tailgate aggressively, pass in risky situations, speed wildly, or engage in road rage behavior because of some perceived insult.  

Men are more likely to make these bad decisions than women, which is why men’s car insurance rates are typically higher. Young men have the highest insurance rates of all, and that is because of this issue combined with their lack of experience. In the United States, a third of all car crash deaths involved speeding, and speeding is far more common among young drivers than older drivers.

Driver Fatigue

Nearly all of us have been guilty of driving when we are too tired. The sad truth is, however, that driving tired causes many of the same issues as driving drunk. It’s harder to see, your reaction time is slower, and you’re not able to make smart decisions quickly. Not only that, but a tired driver is also more likely to fall asleep while driving.

Third-Party Causes

Again, driver error or fatigue is usually the problem in a car accident, but it is possible for other things to cause an accident and for all the drivers involved to be without fault. In most cases, however, even if weather, road conditions, or mechanical failure technically caused the accident, a driver’s poor decisions or distraction can make it much worse than it would otherwise have been.

Get Help From a Personal Injury Attorney in Springfield

It matters who caused an accident because the person or entity at fault is responsible for the damages and losses of those who’ve been injured because of their actions. If you’ve been injured in a vehicle accident, contact Wendt Law Firm P.C. today for help.