Hey, what's happening? Scott Kuboff, a car crash lawyer with the law firm of Ibold & O’Brien, I am sitting here in my home office today taking a look at the Ohio State Highway Patrol's Crash Dashboard. Really interesting, a lot of statistics to kind of dive into. It goes from 2017 through December 19, 2022; that is the most recent update to this database. So, although this video is going to be coming out after that, it is pretty up to date.
Taking a look at statistics, specifically in Geauga county, that is where my main office is in Chardon. During that past five years, we're looking at about 10,000 crashes in Geauga County over that time. The road that has the most crashes, not necessarily the most serious crashes, but the most crashes is State Route 306. So that's folks coming through Bainbridge into South Russell and up into Chesterland. It kind of makes sense as those are the more populated areas of Geauga County on the western part so it's not uncommon to see more crashes. Coming in second and third, very close is US 422 and State Route 44. State Route 44 is another north and south road, in the middle of Geauga County, going through Newbury, Burton and up into Chardon.
Taking a look at what some of the issues are, of course, deer are a pretty big issue. But, in terms of human-based reasons, speed is #2. 1,000 crashes are speed related. Typically, you see speed in terms of a failure to maintain assured clear distance – that’s a fancy way of saying “rear ender.” Coming into #1, is failure to yield. So, in more rural counties where there are stop signs at crossroads, you tend to see folks that roll through those or fail to stop at it and that causes collisions.
Interestingly, a lot of folks think that younger teen drivers are a significant reason for crashes and, while it is a substantial portion of it, the #1 age-related factor in Geauga County is mature-related. It's also not unexpected as Geauga County has an older population.
Taking a look at when these crashes occur, time-wise. As you can imagine, 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM those are the time people are out, people are working, those are when most of the crashes occur. The most significant portion of that time being between 4:00 and 7:00 PM; so that evening rush hour. It also looks pretty well distributed Monday through Friday with the biggest day of crashes is on Friday.
Something I want to take a look at here is accidents that occur where it is “unbelted” related; meaning people are not wearing their seatbelts. Roughly 10% of the crashes in Geauga County over the past five years have been situations where the drivers are not wearing seatbelts. Let's make sure we're buckling up and staying safe this holiday season.
Crash Dashboard: https://statepatrol.ohio.gov/dashboards-statistics/ostats-dashboards/crash-dashboard