Although passenger safety has been among the top priorities of automobile manufacturers but the trends in car accidents seem to remain constant, overtime. Despite strict laws, it is regrettable that the seat belt use for occupants of passenger vehicles is still 84%. According to the statistics by National Highway Authority, cars and related passenger vehicles make up approximately 90% of total vehicles miles traveled, in the United States. Such a high proportion of car miles make it interesting for researchers to understand the reasons and impacts of traffic fatalities.
Passenger Vehicle Statistics
The fatality analysis reporting system of NHA offers useful insights into understanding such incidents in Illinois. Actually, Illinois is among the top five States when it comes to percentage of cars in relation to total number of registered vehicles. In fact, total cars in Illinois are 53% of all registered vehicles. Consequently, the relative proportion of light trucks in the State is lowest in America. Despite such disparity, it seems that these and similar contrasting trends have little effect on the trends in car accidents.
The Claim
Some experts claim that Illinois has been able to reduce the fatality rate by almost 41% since 1994. Moreover, only District of Columbia has shown more improvement in reducing traffic fatalities. Despite these encouraging trends, it should be noted that these figures may be a little misleading. To better understand the trends another important factor has to be taken into account. This factor is based on fatalities rates per 100 million vehicles miles traveled. Although, this factor has also reduced from 1.68 in 1994 to 0.98 in 2009, still a comparative measure with other States demonstrate that the accidents have not reduced to an extent that these figure promote.
Trends
To better evaluate consider the total reduction in fatalities and fatalities per 100 million miles. Comparing a drop in total fatalities demonstrate that these fatalities have decreased by 41% as compared to 17% reduction in the continental United States. Thus, Illinois has fared approximately 2.41 times better than all the other States combined. Now take into account the fatalities per 100 miles. Current figures for Illinois indicate 0.98 fatalities per 100 million mile, which is just slightly better than combined US figures of 1.26. It can be concluded that Illinois has fared just 1.28 percent better than the rest of the United States.
A Clear Picture of these Trends
Anyone looking at the trend of fatalities may think that Illinois is performing much better than the other States but a closer inspection at fatalities per 100 miles mitigates the effects of such great performance. Nevertheless, the trends in Illinois car accidents have definitely shown improvement but it is also important to evaluate different figures to make a reasonable judgment.
