42,700 Crashes

In the news on the local radio (94.5 FM "The Mix") it was reported that there were 42,700 motor vehicle accidents (crashes) in Western Australia in 2009—as recorded by the insurance industry. These are obviously all the accidents reported because there was a corresponding insurance claim processed.

42,700.

That is:

• 3,558 crashes per month.
• 828 crashes per week.
• 118 crashes per day (using all 7 days of the week).
• 5 crashes per hour (spreading them across all 24 hours in the day).

Okay. I can hear the mathematicians saying "wait a minute, there are at least two cars involved in almost every crash so there are really probably more like 2.5 actual crashes per hour when you take that into account".

Even so, that is 2.5 crashes per hour, every hour. I realise that crashes do not happen evenly across the 24 hours. In one hour there could be 10 crashes and then no crashes for the next three hours, or something like that—but it averages out over the day to 2.5 crashes per hour.

No wonder they say you are 100 times more likely to be involved in a car crash than win first division lotto.

And these are the reported crashes for insurance claims. The actual number is probably about 10 to 20 percent more than this when you consider prangs and minor crashes were no insurance claim is made.

If I could just think of a Web site that car crash people all needed to use . . . I would get about five more people using my site every hour.