The 10 Most Dangerous Days To Drive

While some states have clear days of the week that are more dangerous for drivers than others, most states fall in line with the nation’s 10 most dangerous times and days to drive:

  1. Memorial Day weekend: On average, 450 people per year die on this weekend.
  2. The start of Daylight Savings Time – There’s a 17% increase in traffic fatalities on the Monday after shifting to Daylight Savings Time.
  3. Black Friday: Car accidents on Black Friday increase 34%
  4. NFL game day: A home-team win increases collisions by 3.2%, while a home-team loss increases collisions by 9.4%.
  5. Friday the 13th: Collisions increase by about 13% on Friday the 13th compared to the other days in the same month.
  6. New Year’s Day: January 1st ranks as the #1 day of the year with the highest percent of car accident deaths related to alcohol.
  7. July 4th: This day ranks as the second deadliest day for drunken drivers.
  8. Thanksgiving: Roughly 46.3 million Americans drive at least 50 miles on Thanksgiving, naturally leading to more car accidents.
  9. Christmas: The six days around Christmas rank as 27% more dangerous than New Year’s Eve.
  10. St. Patrick’s Day:  Blame it on green beer, but there are many fatalities over St. Patrick’s Day weekends.

While it’s important to be attentive every time you get behind the wheel, pay extra attention on holidays and holiday weekends.

Do teen drivers cause more auto accidents?

The Florida Drivers Association found that there was a high correlation between dangerous times to be on the road and the number of teenagers behind the wheel. They found the most dangerous times for drivers to include:

  • The summertime, when there are 44% more teen drivers on the road (spending an average of 23.6 hours a week driving).
  • The nighttime, when new drivers have much more difficulty judging distance and, in general, more drivers are tired.

Even the safest and most responsible teenagers are still relative novices when it comes to driving. The more teens out on the road, the higher the chance of a car accident. Whether you’re a new driver or you’ve been behind the wheel for several years, remember that the summertime is the most dangerous season of the year, and the nighttime hours are the most dangerous times to drive in the day.

Protect Yourself And Your Car

Whether it’s summer, the hours after an NFL game, or just another day, it’s clear that you can be diligent about staying safe on the roads.

Most Dangerous Places For Driving In Florida

Florida cities accounted for nearly one-third of the 15 most dangerous cities for driving in the nation. When searching for statistics about the most dangerous places to drive in the United States, these Florida cities will consistently rank highly among them with the most car accidents:

  • Fort Lauderdale, Florida (fatality rate per 100,000 people: 22.39)
  • Orlando, Florida (fatality rate per 100,000 people: 19.95)
  • Jacksonville, Florida (fatality rate per 100,000 people: 14.36)
  • St. Petersburg, Florida (fatality rate per 100,000 people: 14.27)

Fort Lauderdale and Orlando ranked first and second on this list, respectively. Another interesting number: Florida’s I-95 ranked as one of America’s deadliest highways.

If you conduct a Google search for dangerous areas to drive in Florida, one city that will consistently pop up in headings is Miami. In fact, Huffington Post released an article claiming that Miami has “the country’s worst drivers.” One of the most alarming points in the article was that “drivers in Miami … have a terrifying tendency to hit pedestrians.”

Protect yourself, your car, and the people around you by enrolling in a defensive driving or traffic school course. You can use it to remove a speeding ticket from your record or lower your insurance rates, and use the information to reduce your chances of being involved in a devastating car accident.

Most Dangerous Areas For Driving In Texas

A study by the National Highway Safety Administration listed the most dangerous cities in the US to drive in and with the most traffic fatalities. Unfortunately, many cities in Texas made the list. Dallas is one of four Texas cities ranked in the top 25 most dangerous for drivers. Dallas also had 590 motor vehicle thefts per 100,00 people, which comes to about 7,913 per year. The only Texas city that ended up with more is Houston with 11,596 per year.

When looking at the top 25 most dangerous cities to drive in, Texas is tied with California and Florida for the states with the most. Here are the cities that made the top 100 list:

  • Dallas
  • Beaumont
  • Odessa
  • Fort Worth
  • Wichita Falls
  • Laredo
  • Denton
  • Midland
  • El Paso
  • Amarillo

Dallas and Houston are also the two most populated cities, and somehow Houston has avoided the top 10 list.