Socioeconomic descriptors of fatal crash rates in the Southeast USA

Abstract

Over the past decades, the Southeast United States has been experiencing consistently higher fatality crash rates compared to other regions of the country. This region also has lower median household incomes, higher percentages of the population below poverty levels, higher percentage of the area classified as rural, and lower percentages of high school completion and university attainment. It is then possible to hypothesize that accident involvement could be affected by these types of socioeconomic characteristics. The objectives of this study were to identify potential socioeconomic factors that could correlate and contribute to the higher fatality crash rates in the Southeast. Driver and vehicle characteristics from the FARS database were related to socioeconomic and demographic Census variables. Crash rates were obtained using the quasi-induced exposure methodology for single- and multi-vehicle crashes. The results show that these socioeconomic characteristics have an impact on single-vehicle crashes but have no statistically significant impact on multi-vehicle crash rates.