Report: 50% of injury accidents occur near intersections
Whenever you drive through an intersection, you are inherently exposed to a greater risk of being involved in a car accident. Reports find that 50 percent of accidents leading to injuries happen at or near intersections. Additionally, intersections account for roughly 25 percent of fatal car crashes.
Some of the risk comes from the road design itself. When you have traffic moving in four different directions and crossing paths at one singular point, there is simply a greater chance for head-on collisions, T-bone accidents, and even rear-end collisions when traffic stops at the intersection. Even if you are a safe driver and do not make any mistakes, your level of risk increases simply because those around you might make critical errors at such an important time.
What can you do to increase your safety?
Becoming a defensive driver is one step you can take to lower your odds of being involved in an accident. You may need to go above and beyond simply following traffic laws.
For example, many intersection accidents happen when someone runs a red light. So if your light turns green, and you are following the rules of the road, it is safe and legal for you to drive into the intersection. But if you want to focus on defensive driving, you may still take an extra second to check both ways and make sure another driver is not about to run the red light and cause a serious crash.
That being said, because of the higher inherent risk levels, there is always a chance you could be injured due to someone else’s negligence. If you are, take the time to look into your legal options to seek financial compensation.
