A Charlotte family may feel hopeful when an injured parent returns home after a serious crash, only to discover that recovery changes from week to week. One day, the person may handle household tasks and answer work emails. The next day, pain, fatigue, headaches, or medical appointments may make even a shortened workday difficult. These […]
A study reported in 2024 placed Fayetteville among U.S. cities with a high share of fatal crashes occurring during selected morning and evening hours. The finding is worth understanding, but the study does not show that every Fayetteville commuter faces the same risk or that rush-hour driving causes a particular crash.
It measures when fatal crashes occurred, not each driver’s probability of crashing during a particular trip. The distinction matters because a percentage of fatal crashes does not account for how many vehicles, trips, miles, or hours of travel occurred during the same period.
What the reported study found
The analysis used National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fatal-crash data from 2018 through 2022. A contemporaneous report describing the study says it treated 7–9 a.m. and 5–7 p.m. as rush hour. The Fayetteville article reported 30 fatal crashes during those windows out of 105 total fatal crashes, or 28.57%.
Other reporting on North Carolina cities used different periods and produced different rankings. For example, a Charlotte Observer report on a 2017–2021 analysis placed Fayetteville seventeenth and Winston-Salem first. Those results should not be blended as if they came from one dataset.
What the percentage does—and does not—mean
- It describes a share of fatal crashes. It does not include every reported collision or every injury crash.
- It does not measure exposure. Without traffic volume, vehicle miles, trip counts, or time spent driving, the percentage cannot establish crash risk per traveler.
- It does not establish causation. The time of day alone does not identify distraction, impairment, speed, roadway design, lighting, or any other cause.
- It is sensitive to the study definition. Changing the years, city boundaries, or hours labeled “rush hour” can change the result.
Why fatal-crash data should be handled carefully
The Fatality Analysis Reporting System is a nationwide census of motor-vehicle traffic crashes in which at least one person dies within the defined reporting period. It is valuable for studying fatal-crash patterns, but it is not a count of all collisions and does not by itself explain why a crash occurred.
How this relates to Charlotte road-safety data
Fayetteville’s rush-hour percentage answers a different question from studies comparing citywide fatal-crash rates, speeding involvement, or impaired-driving involvement. Readers comparing local rankings should check the years, population or exposure denominator, included cities, crash severity, and metric weights before concluding that one city is categorically more dangerous than another.
For an example of a city ranking built from several fatal-crash measures, see the separate explanation of why Charlotte was ranked fifteenth in a 2024 study.
What matters after an individual crash
A city ranking does not decide responsibility for a particular collision. That requires evidence about the drivers, vehicles, road, signals, visibility, witnesses, electronic records, and other facts. Even the time of day can be relevant for several different reasons, such as traffic density, glare, darkness, fatigue, or impaired driving, and those possibilities must be tested rather than assumed.
Rosensteel Fleishman Car Accident & Injury Lawyers provides information about car-accident representation in Charlotte. A case-specific review begins with the evidence from the collision, not a generalized city ranking.
Sources and methodology
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