Study: Georgia sees more deadly crashes in rural areas
ATLANTA, Ga. (WDEF) – The Georgia Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) released results from a 2021 study looking into rural versus urban car crashes.
More than a third of deadly crashes occurred on rural roadways, even though far more people live in Georgia cities.
One big reason for that discrepancy is seatbelt usage.
“The idea behind this paper was to analyze the disproportionate amount of fatal crashes, in rural counties versus urban,” said Tanya Renaud, traffic record coordinator for GOHS. “The main contributing factor is lack of seatbelt use. There is lower seatbelt usage in rural counties versus urban counties.”
Rural counties had 81% seatbelt use, while the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area had 90% use.
In addition, nearly a quarter of all pickup truck drivers in rural Georgia did not use a seatbelt, according to the GOHS. This accounted for the least seatbelt usage of all passenger drivers.
