What Are Common Causes of a Car Crash in CO?

The Colorado State Patrol keeps tabs on the accidents that take place in the state so safety and intervention techniques can be monitored. As the only statewide traffic enforcement agency, the state patrol is particularly useful in collecting statistics to show how car accidents are occurring around the state.

In 2014, troopers in Colorado responded to 3,712 injury and fatal injury collisions in the state. Just over 70 percent of these crashes were able to be attributed to speeding, driving under the influence, lane violations, distracted driving, and for failing to yield. These dangerous driving techniques resulted in a number of injuries and deaths. For example, lane violations alone led to 372 crashes in 2011, which has now grown to 474 crashes in 2014. All crashes listed had either injuries or fatalities, showing how dangerous not paying attention, failing to signal, or driving recklessly can be.

Inattentive driving is also on the rise according to the statistics. In 2014, this was the most common cause of fatal and injury collisions. Inattentive driving caused 732 collisions in 2014, which was 19.7 percent of the fatal or injury crashes that took place on the Colorado highways. DUIs resulted in 13.8 percent of these collisions with 513 taking place in 2014.

Speeding was the second most common cause of crashes in 2014. Six hundred thirty-eight collisions took place because of this, which was actually a drop from previous years. Still, speeding made up 17.2 percent of fatal and injury crashes, showing how dangerous it really can be.

The least common cause of these crashes was the failure to yield to someone else's right of way. This led to 246 crashes, which is 6.6 percent of the total fatal and injury collisions. While making up a lower number of collisions, this is still an important statistic; the number of crashes due to a failure to yield has grown year over year sine 2011.

Source: Colorado State Patrol, "Crash Trends," accessed May. 21, 2015

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