Can You Avoid the Most Common Car Accidents?

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The most common car accidents are rear-end accidents, head-on collisions, T-bones, sideswipes, and rollovers. Most of these happen due to the negligence of other drivers, but you can try to avoid collisions by driving defensively and always paying attention to the road. Even if you are safe, you cannot always avoid suffering injuries in accidents that other drivers cause. Rear-End Accidents Rear-end Accidents are often the result of distracted drivers who fail to pay adequate attention to traffic. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports: Almost half of all the car accidents involving two vehicles over the last three years were rear-end accidents. Every year, rear-end accidents kill about 1,700 people across the nation. A comprehensive study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that 87 percent of all rear-end accidents in 2007 involved a distracted driver. Far from being the mere fender benders that many people consider them, rear-end accidents are both more common and more deadly than most people realize. Head-On Collisions Head-on collisions are disastrous accidents that involve one driver going the wrong way headlong into oncoming traffic, and they are as terrifying as they are likely to be fatal. Head-on collisions tend to involve a significantly impaired driver, someone who fell asleep at the wheel, a driver who passes another vehicle when it is not safe to do so, or someone who gets pushed into oncoming traffic via the force of a precipitating accident. According to the Insurance Information Institute (III), both the following apply to head-on collisions: Head-on collisions were responsible for nearly 11 percent of all fatal accidents in one year. When vehicles of similar weights traveling at similar speeds (of over 56 miles per hour) collide head-on, the resulting injuries of the vehicle occupants often include severe brain injuries, neck injuries, and broken legs. It’s difficult to over-emphasize exactly how dangerous head-on collisions are. T-Bone Accidents T-bone accidents refer to those accidents in which one vehicle drives directly into the side of another, and they often happen at intersections. T-bone accidents are more dangerous because the vehicles we drive don't have much in the way of protection built into their sides (the way they do at the front with the hood and the back with the trunk, which both serve to buffer the impact in the event of a collision). T-bone accidents happen because motorists fail to pay adequate attention to or follow traffic lights, signs, and signals at intersections. Sideswipe Accidents Sideswipe accidents happen when the sides of two vehicles come into contact with one another. The vehicles can travel in the same direction or in different directions when they swipe one another. All it takes is for one motorist to become momentarily distracted or to move into the other driver's lane due to any other form of negligence. The impact of these sideswipe accidents is dangerous enough in and of itself, but it can also push the struck car into oncoming traffic, leading to further impact and injury. Rollovers Rollover accidents happen when a vehicle's tires lose contact with the road, and the car flips over onto either its side or top in the accident. It likely comes as no surprise that rollovers are some of the deadliest car accidents. III reports a significant increase in fatal traffic rollovers over two recent years.

Common Car Accidents and How You Can Help Avoid Them