Reporting in March 2024 placed Fayetteville seventeenth in a study of the share of traffic deaths 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.

A time-of-day percentage describes the selected deaths or crashes in a dataset, not each driver’s probability of crashing during a trip. It does not account for how many vehicles, trips, miles, or hours of travel occurred during the same period.

What the reported study found

The Charlotte Observer’s March 7, 2024 report describes a study using NHTSA data from 2017 through 2021. It reports Fayetteville at No. 17, with nearly 27% of traffic deaths occurring during the study’s rush-hour windows of 7–9 a.m. and 5–7 p.m. These are historical study results, not a current risk estimate for a Fayetteville trip.

A separate WTVR report from July 2024 describes a study using 2018–2022 fatal-crash counts. Deaths and fatal crashes are different units: one crash can cause more than one death. Keep the study, years and counted unit attached to each number rather than combining the two reports.

What the percentage does—and does not—mean

  • Check what was counted. A share of traffic deaths and a share of fatal crashes are different measures. Neither includes every collision or every nonfatal 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