Most of our readers know that various entities, both public and private, keep track of a wide range of statistics on just about every aspect of life in America. Vehicle accident statistics, in particular, are useful to show where, how and when these accidents occur. The idea is that if we can figure out the cause of these oftentimes devastating accidents, perhaps we can take action to reduce the number of accidents that occur.
An insurance institute kept track of when motorcycle accidents occurred based on the day of the week and the time of day. The statistics, from 2013, show some interesting trends. First, it appears that a fatal motorcycle accident is just as likely to occur on a weekday as it is on a weekend, but a motorcycle accident involving injury is more likely to occur on a weekday than it is on a weekend. For the year 2013, there were 2,396 fatal motorcycle accidents that occurred on a weekday and 2,264 fatal motorcycle accidents that occurred on weekends. However, there were 49,000 motorcycle accidents that involved injury on weekdays, which was a full 10,000 more than those that involved injuries that occurred on a weekend.
The time of day these accidents occurred was even more telling. For motorcycle accidents involving injury on a weekday, one particular time period of the day stood out — evening rush hour. The statistics show that motorcycle accidents involving injury spiked during the time period of 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. On the weekends, a block of time from 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. showed the most accidents with injury occurring. These statistics were similar in motorcycle accidents involving a fatality.
Motorcyclists in Georgia may want to take note of these statistics. They seem to show that the danger from other motorists on the roads during rush hour is real.
Source: Insurance Information Institute, “Motorcycle Crashes,” Accessed March 20, 2016