What is the main cause of deaths/accidents in traffic?

[An_Unoriginal_Name]

In Australia? Spiders.

[Elim Garak]

Stupidity. What else? "Speed" and "not following the law" are derivatives of Stupidity.

[mittacc]

The reason most inner city roads are becoming 40km/h is not because it causes less accidents - the reaction time you have at 40 vs 50 is not different enough to really matter. It's because an unprotected person (cyclist or pedestrian) will suffer significantly less injury when an accident does occur. If you are hit by a car moving 50km/h (didn't break, see you, etc) you are pretty much dead, the mortality rate is close to 80%, at 30km/h it's about 10%. 40km/h was chosen as an acceptable tradeoff of injury vs delays.

Streets that get 30km/h on the other hand get this because it is much easier to stop a car moving at 30, at that speed the breaking distance is essentially just your reaction time - any well-kept car will stop on the time it takes you to press the pedal. That's why schools get 30-roads around them.

I live in a suburb :P

[Naoto]

Get rid of cars, give everyone a bike and problem solved, no more traffic accidents and obese Britain will be less obese.

But I guess the main cause is people just not giving a shit, sometimes I'm looking behind me before I cross the road and the car coming has no indicator on (you can go left or straight on here) yet turns anyway and forces me to stop crossing, it's this type of lazy shit that gets people killed when you can't even flick your indicator up all the time.

I never understand how two big lorries can crash into each other on a motorway though.

[Luko]

Not following the law. Easy.

People have, for whatever reason, had this outlook on law that treats them more like guidelines, rather than laws. Most of America, for example, has no idea that it's illegal to be driving in motion with your dome light on. People just don't care. There's almost never turn signals used anymore, speed limits are ignored, no one slows down for weather, people ride right up your ass, people look away to text and make calls like it's nothing... it's fucking disgusting. All of it is.

The laws are easy to find and easy to obey. It's like a cheatsheet that almost completely eliminates the need for the common sense, leaving your reactive thought process to concentrate entirely on not killing people with your giant, metal, speeding death machine.

[Deleted]

Most accidents happen, imo because people are bad at following the traffic. When you are in the traffic, you should make sure that your fellow trafficants can forsee in good time what you will do. This means, no sudden breaking, no unexpected switch of lane, dont drive too close to the ones infront of you, no risky overtakes etc etc..

I dont consider speed as a large cause of accidents but more as a contibuter to the severity of the accident. This is not surprising seeing as Ekin = 0.5*m*v^2 (velocity squared).

[Deleted]

Speed is technically not following the law. Seeing as dangerous driving is illegal, to cause an accident, the driving must necessarily be dangerous, therefore, not following the law is the main cause of accidents.

I'd like to see a decent example of someone causing an accident while following the law...

[Priestion]

Uneducated and distracted drivers.

[mittacc]

After 6years of racing i can say that speed isn't an issues tbh If it was, how can then 6-10people lie behind eachother with like 10-20cm space at 70-80km/h on karts without even touching eachother nor changing driving style? Because these guys know how to and what to do depending on the situation. I've only had 3injures in my racing days. All broken ribs. I didn't get it thanks to the speed, i got it because of a failure on my part while braking, i turned the wheel while i did so because i was infront of a U-turn and forgot to lift my foot of the brake before i turned it, i spun around and got hit by the girl behind me, my seat and my ribs cracked. This wasn't the fault of speed, but failure by me as a driver.

When it finally was ''healed''(it wasn't actually but enough to compete again so i started to train) i upgraded class and got into higher speeds, no problem, a few weeks later i hit the curbs(white n' red stuff on the side of the track) which was extremely high so my kart bumped to hard that it felt like my ribs got cracked again, it was ''only'' a muscle injury however, took 8months before the critical pain was gone. This was caused because of bad curbs and me taking it to my limit(i was new in the class) so it was both a technical faliure and my faliure.

The third time was 2years later and i had just come back from a economic crisis in my family and it was raining. My old friends from before were also there and i wanted to prove that i still was top material(i could drive faster than some of my friiends that was in higher classes) so i drove and drove. After awhile i got into this situation where we were 4people in a row 2of my friends infront of me and one behind me. As i said it was raining and just before the most difficult turn on the track i though ''hey! let's kick some ass and take Jonas and Max at once!'' so i kept pushing down the throttle to be able to brake myself past them(yes, this actually works lol) but i forgot about the rain so ofcourse i pressed the brake too hard and spun around.....again....My third friend, Julia, then hit me in the side. My axis bent, my chair and my ribs cracked. This was also because of my failure as a driver and not the speed. I got aquaplaning and that's why i spun.

[salty goat]

I agree with stupidity, plus the fact that people hole themselves off in their car and are completely oblivious to the outside world. Forget about consideration for others and conscientiousness.

[walbomb]

People who drive 20-30 kph slower than the speed limit on the highway are a lot more dangerous than those going 20-30 kph above the limit. It's the difference in speed that's a killer and some people have it all twisted and backwards in their head thinking that they are being more safe by driving slower when that's just not the case. People need to be predictable when out driving and coming across someone going too fast or too slow, changing lanes without indicating properly, braking needlessly, etc just make me so damn mad.

In the city a lot of accidents are from people not shoulder checking, not signalling, running yellow/amber lights, not following traffic signs, not paying attention, not knowing where they are going or otherwise being distracted, stopping for pedestrians mid-block (which is exceptionally dangerous to any pedestrian that takes that opportunity to cross). Very rarely are the accidents from speeding. About the only time I hear of speeding to be a factor is driving too fast for road conditions such as on snowy, slippery streets during the winter.

[starkey]

Speed, alcohol we have so much tv ads about drink driving it just seems not to get through to people, need harsher punishments people lose there license for like 6 months it doesnt deter people from still driving.

[Whidbey]

Plain old fashioned negligent stupidity. Following to closely, eating or drinking while driving, texting, chatting on their cell etc

[Seegtease]

What's absurd is that (at least where I live) you have to take your food handler's test every 2 years or you can't serve food at a restaurant... but you have to take a driving test once in your entire life. How many people are dying of improperly handled food compared to dying of car related accidents? It's absurd.

Old people are a menace. Nothing personal, but when I see that old lady who can barely see over the wheel in her Buick with the long nose, it's clear she can't see anything closer than 50 feet, and she probably can't see anything FURTHER than that since she's, you know, old. But they can legally drive because they took a test 60 years ago. Yeah, sixty years and they still just assume they remember how to drive, but don't assume you know what temperature to cook a burger after doing it for 2 years.

That's the problem. If we required a re-taking of the test every 2 or 4 years or so, we'd have a LOT less accidents. For sure. Because people would be losing their license, because as they drove for a few years, complacency kicks in and they stop caring about or even knowing the rules of the road. I know a lot of people 30 and older who definitely wouldn't pass their test if they took it again.

[Pull My Finger]

By official statistics in Austria, most casualties are caused by reckless speeding. Obviously, because things are likely to have fatal outcome if you add up high speed to the equation. And there's two kinds of speeding: aggressive speeding and self-overestimating speeding. Both are equally irresponsible and stupid. Generally, a lot of accidents occur because of impatience/aggressiveness and disregard of traffic laws. Alcohol is also a big one.

I personally think that impatient/aggressive/reckless/idiotic behaviour probably causes more accidents than lacking ability, insecurity, confusion etc. It's what I encounter in everyday traffic the most by far. A lot of disrespectful and aggressive people who act like Rambos because they feel untouchable in their car and forget about any basics of mutual respect, civilized behavior and conscientiousness. And I have to admit, I do get angry about that. There have been some situations where I really thought: motherfucker, step out of your car and act up like that and treat me like that while you're standing in front of me.

Of course, there's also some completely shit-for-brains pedestrians and bicyclist jackasses out there. For some reason, these people seem to not consider themselves traffic participants because they're not motorized. But still, I think the biggest problem in traffic are impatient, irresponsible and aggressive car drivers.

[Jailbuild]

Stupidity is definitively the number 1 cause, morons not paying attention behind the wheel of a car, talking shit on phones, txting, looking at everything but the road, you name it I have seen it. ohh and no seat belts, these are the Grade A retards in my book, people that don't put on a belt have absolutely no concept of what happens in a car crash, with a belt it huts like hell, without one you might as well take your brain out of your skull and put it in a blender, ohh and lets not forget the morons that put a kid on there lap then put a seat belt on *shakes head* people are thick as pig shit at times.

[Joán]

After 6years of racing i can say that speed isn't an issues tbh If it was, how can then 6-10people lie behind eachother with like 10-20cm space at 70-80km/h on karts without even touching eachother nor changing driving style? Because these guys know how to and what to do depending on the situation.

Track racing is never a comparable situation. Not only does a race car driver have much higher skill level and situational awareness than you have on a city street, you can also trust that everyone else on the track has the same skill, awareness and goals.

The "skill" of driving city streets is in handling unexpected situations and sure, people could be a lot better at that. But it's not like race car drivers don't have road accidents just like "normal" people, skill at racing a car does not automatically translate to skill at accident avoidance on a busy city street. You might have better reaction times and more instinctive handling of your vehicle, but most of the times when road accidents happen, those things won't really help you - it happens too fast and too unpredictably.

[Blackmist]

Carelessness, mainly. Especially where pedestrians or cyclists are involved.

Speed itself doesn't cause accidents, unless you're being a complete prick. It does however, make things much much worse if accidents do happen. Hit somebody head on at 30, you're looking at a written off car, whiplash and a couple of days of work. Head on at 60, and somebody is going to be looking through dental records to see who you were...

[Ayarea]

People who drive 20-30 kph slower than the speed limit on the highway are a lot more dangerous than those going 20-30 kph above the limit. It's the difference in speed that's a killer and some people have it all twisted and backwards in their head thinking that they are being more safe by driving slower when that's just not the case. People need to be predictable when out driving and coming across someone going too fast or too slow, changing lanes without indicating properly, braking needlessly, etc just make me so damn mad.

In the city a lot of accidents are from people not shoulder checking, not signalling, running yellow/amber lights, not following traffic signs, not paying attention, not knowing where they are going or otherwise being distracted, stopping for pedestrians mid-block (which is exceptionally dangerous to any pedestrian that takes that opportunity to cross). Very rarely are the accidents from speeding. About the only time I hear of speeding to be a factor is driving too fast for road conditions such as on snowy, slippery streets during the winter.

People not paying attention to slower drivers and not able to anticipate to traffic are the dangerous types here.

[mittacc]

i feel that people are getting depressed about the crash thing so i'll link a funny movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMtu2z0Dpw4 skip to 1:22. See how the drivers fail at checking for other viechles? it would've been fine if just one of them came at that speed, but in such an area one have to take it easy