The number of injuries and fatalities related to car accidents in Los Angeles is on the constant rise. Despite all the effort of the city’s officials to reduce the number of fatalities, there are more car crashes in Los Angeles every day.
In 2015, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti introduced the Vision Zero plan that was supposed to create a 20% drop in all traffic-related fatalities.
However, during the first year of Vision Zero, there was a 43% increase in fatal auto accidents in Los Angeles. In 2017 there was an additional 22% increase in fatal car crashes, and the number of traffic-related deaths continued to grow every year. In 2021, Los Angeles has the highest rate of fatal car accidents and injuries related to motor-vehicle accidents nationwide.
Despite Lockdown, Traffic Fatalities Increases
Even the Covid-19 lockdowns couldn’t decrease the number of accidents and deaths in Los Angeles. In 2020 there were 3,723 traffic-related fatalities, even though California wasn’t the one with the highest number of car accidents.
In simple terms, California may have decreased the number of traffic collisions, but they have become more deadly.
Post-Lockdown Los Angeles Traffic
Halfway through 2021, Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, stated that “congestion is back and traffic volumes are creeping back in.” For Los Angeles, this means that once again, a person gets killed in a crash every 36 hours on average. From January to July, that number was as low as 30 hours on average.
Dangerous Driving Areas in Los Angeles
The same LAPD data shows that some parts of Los Angeles are disproportionately more dangerous than others. For example, in the first half of 2021, as many as 100 people died in car accidents in the South L.A. and San Fernando Valley regions. The West and Central L.A. together have about 48 car accident fatalities.
Reynolds gives a good explanation of this phenomenon:
“We’ve got a lot of freeways that bisect the southern part of the city. And we’ve got a lot of arterials adjacent to those freeways, like Adams Boulevard, that have not received the kinds of safety treatments that we’ve been trying to get to across the city…
The Valley is another part of the city that has a lot of really wide, fast streets — I think about streets like Victory and Vanowen — because it’s been historically a very car-heavy and car dependent part of the city, due to its land-use patterns. Long distances that people travel to live their lives daily requires them to drive.”
According to a top Los Angeles car accident attorney and the latest UCS-Crosstown LA study, these are the top 5 most dangerous intersections in Los Angeles:
So, What Are the Odds?
When you look at the CDC reports, you’ll find that you are more likely to die of heart disease more than anything. California’s first cause of death is cardiovascular complications, followed by cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and strokes. Car accidents are the fifth leading cause of death in California, but this finding can be misleading.
While it is true that 62,000 people dying from heart diseases in 2019 are a lot more than 3,606 road fatalities, those two conditions depend on different factors.
While heart disease depends on genetics, environmental habits, and other medical conditions, auto accidents depend primarily on our own driving habits. Therefore, they are preventable.
However, if you are interested in numbers, car insurance companies have those ready for you. The data collected shows that an average driver will file a car accident claim every 17.9 years. This means that if you get your license at the age of 16, you’ll have at least three car crashes in your lifetime.
The chances of car accidents increase in teen drivers because they are much less experienced but more prone to alcohol consumption and speeding without wearing a seat belt. The chances of a driver getting killed in a car accident are 1 in 103 for every 1,000 miles driven. However, many factors contribute to these numbers.
Speeding, bad weather, poor road conditions, distracted driving, and driving under the influence are just some of them.
However, the odds of getting injured in a car accident are a bit harder to predict. Looking at the emergency rooms statistics and comparing it with the car accident and fatality data in Los Angeles, for every fatality, there are eight people who need to receive treatment at the emergency room.
The data only shows those car accident victims that need to be treated, but there can be thousands of those suffering from minor injuries or injuries that can be treated at the scene.
