Transportation and Vehicle Safety: Traffic Accidents, national highway traffic and safety administration, national highway traffic

Question
How many traffic accidents in the US (or CA if you can find that) each year are caused by sneezing?

Answer
Hi Don.....

Your question is a good one, and there are many urban legends concerning statistics, laws, and vehicle manufacture requirements concerning this question.

Firstly, the only time we would ever know the causal factors of an accident are when evidence is available and/or when witnessed by another person.

In an accident involving the death of a driver and/or passengers, there are no specific symptomological evidence that points to sneezing as being the causal factor of an accident in a postmortem state.

The only way we could ever know this to be true is either by the driver, passenger(s) or others having witnessed this and being alive to give an account.

To my knowledge, accidents have been reported due to chronic sneezing, photic sneeze reflex and other variants, but I do not believe this to be a primary or even close secondary causal factor of collisions.

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration would be all over this if it were true. So would the insurance administration, just to name a few.

There are some people who shouldn't drive because of various maladies that create a marked decrease in awareness and attention to driving a vehicle. Certainly, some sneezers could qualify, along with a long host of other medical and physiological issues.

I would suggest that those who create urban legends have witnessed more cases of accidents involving sneezing than those who investigate them.

I am in no way lessening the fact that chronic sneezing and photic sneeze reflex issues are not real and wide spread. In fact, I believe about 20 of the population has this. I just do not accept the notion that they play in the top 10 causal factors of collisions.

I hope this helps Don!

Terry