The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has some interesting stats available to the public through their Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
One of the statistics they keep is the number of crashes on each day of the week. We decided it would be interesting to see which day of the week had the most accidents on average and which days had the lowest number of crashes.
Without further ado, here are the rankings averaged out over the last ten years (2000-2009) with the most dangerous day listed first:
- Saturday — 6,826 crashes per year
- Sunday — 6,007 crashes per year
- Friday — 5,865 crashes per year
- Thursday — 4,767 crashes per year
- Monday — 4,603 crashes per year
- Wednesday — 4,508 crashes per year
- Tuesday — 4,455 crashes per year
Not particularly surprising, but it’s interesting to see the range. You’re over 1.5 times more likely to get into a crash on Saturday than you are on Tuesday (the safest day of the week).
Want to see all the data? Click here.
If you look over the data, you will see the dramatic decrease in crashes over the past ten years.
Overall, our roads are safer than they have ever been.
Feel free to throw out some theories in the comments section on why you think the numbers turned out the way they did.