A new study has officially deemed July 4th as the most dangerous day to drive in America.
Common sense and years of warnings from family and friends have made the general public fairly aware of the poor driving conditions on particularly boozy holidays (Labor Day, Halloween, New Year’s Day), and now data collected from Geotab, a telematics and GPS vehicle tracking company, shows road conditions on July 4th to be the most deadly.
Geotab looked at fatality and traffic data over a 10-year period to see how U.S. states compared when it comes to road safety. Geotab analyzed road traffic, crash and fatality reports, and used this data to calculate a Fatal Crash Rate (FTR) for each day and state. The FTR is the total number of fatal road accidents per billion miles driven by cars, trucks and motorcycles.
July 4th has had an average of 119 deadly crashes over a 10-year period and a Fatal Crash Rate of 14.9, making it the most dangerous day to drive in the U.S. 47 percent of these fatal crashes involved alcohol or incidents of driving under the influence.
“The future of connected vehicle data will enable Geotab to produce more services to help improve road safety and vehicle operating efficiency”, says Colin Sutherland, Executive Vice President of Geotab.
Geotab has also used the information they gathered to create an infographic that shows the most dangerous day to drive in each state (you can see it here).
Main and lead photo by Paulo Valdivieso/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
Madison Gable is a freelance writer based out of Athens, Georgia.