Oklahoma In Top 10 For Most Fatal Car Crashes

If you've ever driven the state, there's no shortage of bad and often dangerous roads to travel. Amazingly, while there are worse roads in the smaller town across the state, most state highways mirror the roads we drive everyday here in Lawton. Old, decrepit, buckling concrete infrastructure from decades ago and just like we always here from officials in Lawton, the state "just doesn't have the money to fix roads." Really makes you wonder where all that money goes doesn't it? Then again, what can you expect when taxpayers are expected to make up a $400million oil and gas tax credit?

Before I hop off into a tangent of non-party specific political corruption at the highest and lowest levels of Oklahoma governments, lets talk about our high number of fatal car crashes in this state.

From 4AutoInsuranceQuote.com

#10 – Oklahoma

Best Category: Per Miles Traveled
Worst Category: Per Resident

 

Ranked 10th in this ranking of the states with the most fatal car accidents, Oklahoma has its best category in fatal crashes per miles traveled and its worst category in fatal crashes per resident.

 

For every 100 million miles traveled in Oklahoma, there were 1.28 fatal crashes between 2016 and 2018. In that same time period, there were 1,844 fatal accidents in Oklahoma overall.

 

In its worst category — fatal crashes per resident — Oklahoma averaged 15.6 annual fatal crashes between 2016 and 2018 for every 100,000 people.

As much as residents would like to blame our famously bad roads for the scourge of vehicular fatalities, they only seem to be a small part of the problem. If you've ever peeked in at the drivers around you traveling down Cache Road, you'll know Public Enemy #1 is distracted driving. I cannot tell you how many drivers I see with their heads buried in their phones in the mere twelve total miles I commute every day. It's staggering. Worse yet, I see uniformed officers from LPD guilty of it often too. I'm also not without fault. When I catch a red light, I'll peek at my phone when I'm stopped. I'll occasionally peek at my phone when I'm the only one on the turnpike too. It's just such a long stretch of nothing road. I still don't text while driving. There was a moment in time back in 2010 where I looked up from my iPhone3G just in time to keep myself from driving off an overpass in OKC. Since then, I refuse to even look at texts while I'm in motion. You might encourage people to do the same. It might move us the other direction on this list.