Car Accidents Prove Largest Killer in Harsh Weather Conditions

Though recent weather disasters like tornadoes and Hurricane Sandy have inflicted serious damages and killed dozens of people over the past year, demonstrating the deadly potential of Mother Nature, car accidents remain the most prominent killer in harsh weather conditions by a wide margin, says Plymouth University meteorology professor James Koemer, who is set to moderate the American Meteorology Society’s Washington Forum this week, where accident prevention will be the main focus.

Each year, more than 7,000 people are killed in weather-related accidents, according to data gathered by the Federal Highway Administration, which defines weather-related crashes as those that occur in adverse weather such as rain, sleet, snow or fog, or on slick pavement. And yet despite this large number of fatalities, none are included in the National Weather Service’s annual death toll caused by weather, which usually reports death totals in the hundreds each year.

The reason for the omission, according to weather service spokesman Chris Vaccaro, is that “The weather event must be an active agent in the fatality or injury. If heavy snow falls from a tree and crushes someone, that would be the snow killing the person. If the roads are slippery and someone crashes and dies, that would be the person’s driving too fast in the elements that killed the person.” As a result, many argue that serious dangers are being overlooked, such as Sheldon Droban, science program manager at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, who notes that “there [is] no awareness of how big an issue it is.”

Confusing awareness is news media coverage of major highway pileups involving several vehicles, which are responsible for only a fraction of accident fatalities. A large majority of deaths occur in one or two vehicle accidents that go largely unreported. “There is such a focus on the big events, that to have one or two people dying at a time just isn’t a catastrophic event,” says Kevin Petty, chief science officer at Vaisala, a Finnish meteorology firm.

To help drivers understand the potential dangers, researchers at Vaisala are working to improve technology designed to share information between cars on the road about the weather. “Cars themselves have the ability to sense what’s going on in the environment,” says Petty. “The key is to share the information with the other nearby vehicles on the road, such as those following ten miles behind.” At NCAR, a system known as “Vehicle Data Translator” is also being designed to give drivers real time information about road and atmosphere conditions.

This data translator system will allow vehicles to gather important weather information and broadcast it to others on the road through preexisting wireless networks. With this information, drivers can be notified of fog, heavy rain, black ice, and other common accident causing phenomena in time to prepare for it. “Cars have all these computes in them nowadays, and they’re incredibly complicated,” says Droban. “They know all kinds of stuff that’s going on, but they don’t really share the information.”

Through an increase in awareness and the assistance of advance information sharing technologies, Professor Koemer and the American Meteorology Society are optimistic that improvements can be made, saving hundreds of lives each year. Though weather related car accident fatalities may never be included in national weather caused death statistics, the dangers are real, and should be treated as a primary issue in need of immediate attention.