Where does Louisiana rank among worst car accident states?

There is a lot about living in Louisiana for Lake Charles residents to take pride in. Unfortunately, the safety of our roads is not one of them. Drunk drivers, distracted drivers and other reckless, dangerous motorists routinely kill and gravely injure innocent people in violent car accidents.

Forbes recently examined fatal car accident data for each state and the District of Columbia, then ranked them by six types of preventable collisions per capita:

• Drunk driving
• Distracted driving
• Phone use while driving
• Drowsy driving
• Wrong-way driving
• Failure to obey traffic signs or signals

Forbes assigned each state a score for these metrics and an overall score out of 100. The higher a state’s score, the more deadly accidents it had. The study ranked Louisiana the second-most-dangerous state in which to drive out of the entire country with a score of 89.32. Only Texas, with a “perfect” score of 100, came out worse.

Why does Louisiana rank so low?

An article about the study noted that Louisiana ranked third-worst for deaths caused by distracted driving, with 3.74 such collisions per 100,000 licensed drivers. The Pelican State also ranked in the top 10 for fatal accidents caused by drunk drivers (13.44 per 100,000 licensed drivers) and drowsy drivers (1.92/100,000). The consistently poor figures across several categories were what gave Louisiana such a low ranking.

The chances that you or somebody you love will get into a life-threatening car wreck with a negligent driver are still thankfully low. But such tragedies do happen. So do collisions that you survive but are left with painful injuries that cause long-term disabilities. Nobody should have to pay huge hospital bills and lose their ability to earn a wage because of somebody else’s thoughtless decisions behind the wheel.