Have you ever been sitting patiently at a red light when you watched another driver recklessly blow through the intersection without slowing down? Or maybe you’ve tried to speed up for a yellow light yourself, only to find it turn red a split second before you went through.
What these incidents may lead you to ask is just how many people get involved in red-light accidents each and every year. The total number of incidents of red-light running are hard to calculate. After all, how many people run lights without crashing or without anyone around to witness it? We can, however, look at some of the crash statistics. As it turns out, this is probably more common than you thought.
For instance, some experts claim that at least two people pass away in these accidents every single day in the United States. Every single day. In fact, it’s slightly more than two people per day, which would come out to just over 700 deaths per year. In 2017, there were a total of 939 such deaths. That was an increase of 28% over the statistics from 2012 and showed that these incidents had hit a 10-year high.
It’s not surprising that these accidents are violent and often deadly. They’re hard to avoid for the drivers passing through the light legally, they often happen at high speeds, and they’re unexpected. What is surprising is just how often they happen. If you assume that most incidents of red-light running don’t lead to fatalities, you can imagine how many times this occurs every day and every year.
If you’ve been injured or lost a loved one, you may have a right to financial compensation.