Kansas City officials are seeing a startling increase in fatal car accidents while the rest of the state of Missouri is experiencing a decline in fatal car accidents. The bizarre dichotomy of these statistics has left police officers in Kansas City scratching their heads. According to the data, 93 people have died in car accidents this year, marking a 37 percent increase over 2016. Meanwhile, the state of Missouri has seen a decrease in the fatal car accident rate by three percent.
So what is happening here? What is the explanation for the dramatic increase in fatal car accidents in one particular area of the state, while the rest of the state sees a decline?
There is no simple answer, but some Kansas City officers let their thoughts be known in the source article for this post. They believe the usual suspects are at play — drunk driving and distracted driving. But they also think a more mundane, but still insidious, driving behaviour is at fault: aggressive driving.
This doesn’t necessarily mean road rage though. When officers mention this aggressive driving, they mean people going a bit over the speed limit or, continuously changing lanes to get ahead in traffic. It’s these little things in driving behaviour that increase the probability of an accident overall.
So we have a plea to all Kansas City drivers out there: take a deep breath and operate your vehicle safely. Trying to get a couple of seconds ahead of the rest of traffic isn’t worth your life — or the lives of innocent people out on the road.
Source: KCUR, “Kansas City Police Baffled By Rise In Deadly Traffic Accidents,” Sam Zeff, Dec. 13, 2017