Why Are Alabama's Roads So Deadly?

Alabama ranks among the worst in the nation for traffic accident fatalities.

The state’s 5 million residents are twice as likely to die in car accidents than the average American, with almost 14 deaths per 100,000 compared to the national average of 7, according to the CDC. And that’s a five percent decrease in fatality rates from the year prior.

Source: Birmingham Car Accident Attorney of The Mitchell Law Firm, LLC

Of course, the usual suspects are a factor: misusing seat belts, speeding and distracted driving.
However, the CDC actually found 90 percent of Alabamians wear seat belts compared to the nation’s 86 percent.

The main culprit, according to some public health and traffic experts, is location.

Seventy-seven percent of car accidents in 2014 occurred in urban areas; however, 60 percent of accident fatalities happened in rural areas, according to the Alabama Department of Transportation’s (ALDOT) 2014 Crash Facts.

Why?

Simply put, there’s not enough hospitals near rural roads, despite the fact that more people live in rural neighborhoods than metropolitan ones. In fact, the director of health promotion and chronic disease at the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) once said, “the real danger is being in a traffic accident on a rural road.”

Source: ALDOT 2014 Crash Facts

The further away a crash is from a hospital- the more rural the accident is- the longer it takes for help to arrive and return to the trauma center with the injured. This valuable time severely slices into the “golden hour”- people admitted to hospitals within one hour of the accident have an enhanced survival rate.

Unfortunately, Alabama has a lot of “golden hours.” In 2014, a crash happened every four minutes, a crash with injuries every 13 minutes, and a crash with fatalities every 10 hours. Almost all Alabamians, 98 percent, will be involved in an accident of any severity in their lifetime while the odds of involvement in a crash with injuries or fatalities is greater than one in three.

Hopefully, the one in three don’t reside in one of the eight counties with no hospital at all. ADPH compares mortality rates slightly different than the CDC. They include all persons killed in a car accident as opposed to just car passengers- for Alabama, they found the average rate of death was 19 per 100,000 people between 2011 and 2013. Using the ADPH’s formula, the national average for the same time frame was 11. Lowndes County, with no hospital and an hour and a half from Montgomery, has a accident fatality rate of 55; adjacent Wilcox County is 55 per 100,000, five times the national average.

Rural drivers are also on the road more than city dwellers, driving farther for work or social events. As is true across the nation, lower gas prices leads to more leisure driving, especially in rural areas surrounded by beautiful scenery. The more miles traveled a year, the more likely accidents are.

Drive Safe Alabama, part of ALDOT, is raising awareness for the goal of zero traffic deaths over a 25-year period- no easy feat for any state. The organization's goal as a whole is to get drivers to change their habits behind the wheel.

While hospitals may not be sprouting up in the near future nor are drivers expected to obtain this goal by not driving, Alabamians should become more cautious and aware of their surroundings.