According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2018, there were 132,908,249 registered passenger cars travelling America’s Highways. There were another 141,242,162 light trucks, 8,666,185 motorcycles, 992,152 buses, and 13,233,910 large trucks. These staggering numbers mean that nearly 300 million vehicles take to our highways each day. This results in crashes that injure 2,710,000 people (as of 2018) each year.
The months of November and December see the most total number of crashes each year. Saturday is the deadliest day of the week for fatal crashes at a time range of between 9 p.m. to Midnight. Thursday is the day of the week most injury crashes occur, with those crashes occurring most frequently between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
In terms of conditions, most crashes by a large margin occurred during normal conditions in the daylight. Crashes by rear end collision produced the most number of injuries and property damage with crashes by angle accounting for the next largest amount of injury producing crashes.
By far the initial point of impact in most crashes is a frontal impact, followed by left sided impacts and right sided impacts. Rear impacts were the least of the initial points of impact in crashes. In terms of vehicle occupants, the driver was the occupant most often killed or injured in crashes by almost double of the passengers.
California, Texas and Florida accounted for the highest numbers of fatal crashes in 2018 followed by Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio, according to NHTSA. Colorado has the highest percentage of rollover deaths with nearly half (49.5%) of its total fatal accidents resulting from rollovers.