The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety has released a report giving statistics about the car and truck accidents in each of the 159 counties in Georgia. Fulton County has an absolutely overwhelming number of accidents, injuries and fatalities in car crashes. For each of the counties, the Fulton County car accident report shows a map detailing where the fatalities were in 2007 2008 and 2009. The map for Fulton County only reports on the deaths in car accidents in 2009, presumably because the map is so covered with dots representing fatalities in 2009 that it would be nearly impossible to add the deaths from car and truck wrecks in 2007 or 2008.
The silver lining for Fulton County drivers is that the number of crashes, injuries and fatalities in car and truck wrecks has decreased in the time span between 2005 and 2009 (the last year for which statistics were available).
The GOHS released its report by county, so the numbers it gives cover auto accidents in Atlanta as well as Sandy Springs and Roswell and Alpharetta, and in the East Point, College Park, Fairburn, Union City, Palmetto, and Mountain Park areas.
Fulton County had 50,583 car and truck accidents in 2005. The number dropped very slightly, to 50,470 car crashes, in 2006, and yet more in 2005, down to 48,316. In 2008, Fulton County got a more significant drop in car wrecks, down to 45,717. A smaller drop in the number of car accidents occurred in 2009, with 45,013 wrecks occurring in total.
Like the number for car and truck accidents, the number of injuries in the wrecks dropped every year from 2005 to 2009. In 2005, 17,403 people were injured in car wrecks on roads in Fulton County. The number dropped to 16,592 in 2006, and then down to 15,457 in 2007. The drops continued into 2008, when 14,521 people were injured in car and truck wrecks in Fulton County, and in 2009, which saw 14,495 injuries.
The number of deaths in car crashes also dropped, although the drop was less consistent. In 2005, 118 people lost their lives in car accidents on roads and highways in Fulton County. The number rose in 2006, when 123 people died in car crashes, but dropped in 2007, when Fulton County had 110 fatalities in car and truck wrecks. The number of traffic deaths ticked back up in 2008, to 115, and then dropped again in 2009, when there were 100 deaths in car accidents in Fulton County.
The map that accompanies the report shows that the overwhelming number of fatalities occur along the I-75 and I-85 corridors that crisscross Fulton County and run through downtown Atlanta. A large number of fatalities occurred along I-20, too, especially in the area near where it intersects with I-75 and I-85.
Unlike in many other counties, alcohol played a key role in the deaths in car crashes in Fulton County. Between 28 and 35 deaths – between a third and a quarter – that occurred involved alcohol. Surprisingly, fewer of the deaths in car and truck accidents involved speed, although the number still ran between 1/4 and 1/5 of all deaths.
Lee Wallace, the principal at The Wallace Law Firm, L.L.C., is a car wreck lawyer who represents clients who have been injured or have been killed because of car accidents in Atlanta, Fulton County and throughout Georgia.