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29% of Accidents Occur within 1 Minute of Max Speed

A recent analysis of patterns in accident data finds that 29% of accidents happened within one minute of the driver reaching the maximum speed during their trip. The remaining 71% of accidents occurred within the first 10 minutes of reaching maximum speed.

by Staff
April 11, 2018
2 min to read


Photo of a car crash courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

A recent analysis of patterns in accident data finds that 29% of accidents happened within one minute of the driver reaching the maximum speed during their trip. The remaining 71% of accidents occurred within the first 10 minutes of reaching maximum speed.

The findings come from Geotab, a telematics technology provider, and are based on data collected over a ten month period from Feb. 1 to Nov. 12, 2016. The objective of the analysis was to explore how accident data patterns and telematics can improve driver safety.

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The analysis also looked at speed prior to impact and showed that just over half (51%) of accidents occurred below 40 mph in city driving conditions. In addition, the data was assessed to determine the maximum speed drivers in an accident were going, finding that 32% of vehicles had a maximum speed above 70 mph during the trip in which an accident occurred.  

Geotab also evaluated the time from the start of a trip to a collision. The findings show that 33% of accidents occurred within the first 10 minutes of getting behind the wheel, while the majority (54%) happened within the first 20 minutes of a trip.

Geotab data is derived at aggregate from more than 1 million commercial vehicles in Geotab's data environment with vehicles that range in size from small passenger cars to class 8 heavy-duty trucks.

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