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2018 Crash Facts Book
The Alabama Crash Facts Book (CFB) is an annual publication produced in part by CAPS that provides a wide breadth of traffic safety statistics for a variety of constituencies. While most of the users of the CFB are traffic safety personnel, this publication is also intended to serve as a public information conduit.
A rather unusual Primary Contributing Circumstance, “Driving too Fast for Conditions,” surfaced in the 2018 calendar year. Typically, this circumstance is only seen less than 3% of the time, but in 2018 it appeared 4.6% of the crashes, which accounted for 49 fatal crashes in 2018. Most of these fatal crashes were highly over-represented in the higher impact speed ranges (from 51 to 80 MPH). No doubt the fact that this year experienced 12.5% of its crashes in the rain, while the average for the other four years was only 10.8% (3749 additional crashes above average). Generally, we expect crashes in the rain to have a lower severity (fewer fatal crashes) than on dry pavement. However, because these crashes were accompanied by higher speeds, they had 25% higher fatality crashes than would be expected compared to all other crashes in the five-year range of the study (2016-2020). For a more intensive review of the effect of wet weather on fatal crashes, click here.
Read the 2018 CFB here.