{
  "slug": "car-crash",
  "question": "What are the odds of dying in a car crash?",
  "category": "transport",
  "no_reliable_estimate": false,
  "perceived": {
    "description": "Car crashes are the strange case where the perceived/actual gap runs the wrong way. Fear of flying sits near the top of public phobias; fear of dying in an ordinary car crash barely registers in national fear surveys at all. The Chapman Survey of American Fears Wave 10 does not even include \"dying in a car accident\" as a standalone item, though a narrower framing — being hit by a drunk driver — draws roughly two in five US adults into the \"afraid or very afraid\" bucket.\n",
    "rough_estimate": "most people put it well below the real number, if they estimate it at all",
    "kind": "survey",
    "survey_source": {
      "title": "Chapman Survey of American Fears, Wave 10 — Complete List of Fears 2024",
      "publisher": "Chapman University",
      "url": "https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/_files/2024-csaf-fears-high-to-low.pdf",
      "year": 2024
    }
  },
  "native": {
    "display": "~12.2 deaths per 100,000 people per year (US, 2023)",
    "numerator": 12.2,
    "denominator": 100000,
    "unit": "per year",
    "population": "US total population"
  },
  "normalized": {
    "lifetime_us_adult": 0.0095,
    "display": "1 in ~105 lifetime (US adult)",
    "log_value": -2.022,
    "assumptions": "Starts from the IIHS 2023 US per-capita fatality rate of 12.2 motor vehicle deaths per 100,000 people per year. Compounding that annual hazard over 59 remaining adult years gives 1 − (1 − 0.000122)^59 ≈ 0.0072, i.e. about 1 in 139. Running the same arithmetic over a full 79-year life expectancy, or dividing annual deaths by annual US births, gives the higher figure of roughly 1 in 93 (≈ 0.0108) that NSC Injury Facts publishes. The 0.0095 point estimate sits between those two conventions.\n",
    "uncertainty": {
      "low": 0.0065,
      "high": 0.011
    },
    "scope": "us_adult_lifetime"
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot",
      "title": "Fatality Facts 2023: Yearly snapshot",
      "publisher": "Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)",
      "source_type": "reputable_reference",
      "statistic": "40,901 US motor vehicle crash deaths in 2023; 12.2 deaths per 100,000 people; 1.26 deaths per 100 million miles traveled",
      "excerpt": "\"A total of 40,901 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2023.\"\n",
      "source_date": "2023-12-31",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-11",
      "archive_url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20250611083542/https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot",
      "calculation_notes": "IIHS publishes US population-weighted crash death rates derived from NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The 12.2 deaths per 100,000 figure is used directly as our native annual hazard. Lifetime = 1 − (1 − p_annual)^years, where p_annual = 0.000122 and years is 59 (remaining adult life) for the lower bound and ~79 (full life expectancy) for the upper bound.\n",
      "independence_note": "IIHS is a third-party insurance-industry analysis built on NHTSA's FARS data, the same upstream used by the NHTSA report cited below. Treat the two as a presentation layer and the primary government report on one shared dataset rather than independent counts.\n"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813762",
      "title": "Traffic Safety Facts 2023 Data: Summary of Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes (DOT HS 813 762)",
      "publisher": "National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), National Center for Statistics and Analysis",
      "source_type": "govt_report",
      "statistic": "40,901 people killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2023; 12.21 fatalities per 100,000 resident population; 1.26 deaths per 100 million VMT",
      "excerpt": "\"An estimated 6,138,359 police-reported traffic crashes in which 40,901 people were killed and an estimated 2,442,581 people were injured. One person was killed every 13 minutes and an estimated 5 people injured every minute in traffic crashes in 2023.\"\n",
      "source_date": "2025-10-01",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-12",
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260413164503/https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813762",
      "calculation_notes": "This is the primary FARS-based government statistical publication for US motor vehicle fatalities. The 12.21 per 100,000 and 40,901 deaths figures match the IIHS source to within rounding — both draw from the same FARS upstream, but this is the authoritative government report.\n",
      "independence_note": "NHTSA FARS is the upstream dataset for both this report and the IIHS source. They are not independent estimates but this is the authoritative government publication rather than a third-party presentation.\n"
    }
  ],
  "comparison_anchors": [
    {
      "label": "Death by plane crash (lifetime, US adult)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.000017
    },
    {
      "label": "Death by lightning strike (lifetime, US)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.00000354
    }
  ],
  "personal_factor_multipliers": [
    {
      "factor": "age 16-24",
      "multiplier": 3,
      "notes": "IIHS: teen and young-adult crash fatality rates are 2-3x the adult average"
    },
    {
      "factor": "age 65+",
      "multiplier": 1.5,
      "notes": "fragility offsets lower crash frequency"
    },
    {
      "factor": "rural resident (drives mostly on rural roads)",
      "multiplier": 2,
      "notes": "NHTSA: rural fatality rate per VMT is roughly double urban"
    },
    {
      "factor": "drives <5,000 miles/year",
      "multiplier": 0.4,
      "notes": "exposure-proportional; lower mileage reduces cumulative risk"
    },
    {
      "factor": "always belted, modern vehicle with advanced safety",
      "multiplier": 0.5,
      "notes": "seatbelt alone reduces fatality risk ~45%; modern crash structures add further reduction"
    }
  ],
  "short_label": "Car crash",
  "outcome_severity": "fatal",
  "exposure_pattern": "recurring",
  "outcome_type": "death",
  "valence": "negative",
  "caveats": "The US per-capita figure is a pooled average across every age, every region, every vehicle type, and every exposure level. It is not a personal forecast. A 19-year-old rural driver on a motorcycle at 2 a.m. and a 55-year-old commuter who drives 20 miles a day in a modern crossover are separated by more than an order of magnitude in actual annual risk, even though both contribute to the same 12.2 per 100,000 number.\n",
  "quality_score": {
    "d1": 5,
    "d2": 5,
    "d3": 5,
    "d4": 4,
    "d5": 5,
    "d6": 5,
    "d7": 5,
    "d8": 4,
    "avg": 4.75,
    "scored_by": "claude-code-8d",
    "scored_at": "2026-05-25",
    "methodology_version": "1.2"
  },
  "reviewer": "likelier-phase-5-agent",
  "last_reviewed": "2026-04-11",
  "reviewed": true,
  "generated_at": "2026-04-11",
  "image": {
    "alt": "A single pair of overlapping muted traffic cones on a pale background, flat vector illustration, no vehicle, no wreckage."
  },
  "attribution": "Likelier — https://likelier.app",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
  "support": "https://buymeacoffee.com/kgluszczyk?via=likelier&utm_content=api-fear-single",
  "canonical_url": "https://likelier.app/car-crash"
}