Car Color & Crash Risk in the Tampa Bay Area

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Your choice of car color may increase the likelihood of whether you will be involved in a car accident, but studies are conflicted about which colors reduce crash risk and which colors increase it.

More importantly, other factors, such as driver behavior, traffic congestion, road conditions, and environmental conditions, play an even larger role. Driving carefully, particularly in heavy traffic and adverse weather, could have the greatest impact on your likelihood of getting into a crash.

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How Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers Can Help After an Accident in Tampa

Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers is a firm made up of award-winning and board-certified trial attorneys and Tampa car accident attorneys who have over 50 years of combined experience.

When you hire us, we will:

Explain your rights and options
Investigate your car accident and gather evidence
Calculate your damages
Work with experts when necessary
Handle negotiations and communications
Take your case to court to protect your rights

Car crash injuries can leave you disabled and facing mountains of medical bills. Contact Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers to discuss your options for meeting your needs with an injury claim.

How Common Are Car Crashes in the Tampa Bay Area?

According to the Florida Traffic Safety Dashboard, the Tampa Police Department investigated 17,003 crashes on Tampa roads and highways in 2021. These accidents killed 76 and seriously injured another 227.

Florida does not release car accident statistics about the colors of vehicles involved in crashes, but the state does release statistics that could tell you when visibility might play a role in your crash risk.

Over 32% of car accidents in Tampa occurred between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. During dusk, night, and dawn, your car’s color may play a role in its visibility.

Tampa also has, on average, 125 rainy days per year, meaning 34.2% of days in Tampa could involve reduced visibility due to rain and similar conditions where, again, drivers could have difficulty picking up on certain colors.

Overview of Car Color and Crash Risk in the Tampa Bay Area

Two groups of scientists have looked at the connection between car color and crash risk:

University of Auckland Study

In a University of Auckland study, researchers reviewed 571 injury crash records. The researchers cleaned the data to eliminate any influences of drug and alcohol use, driver age, weather, road conditions, and light conditions.

This study showed that black, brown, gray, silver, and red car colors had statistically greater implications on their crash risk. Brown and black cars had an increased crash risk, while gray, silver, and red colors decreased the risk.

Monash University Study

A Monash University study contradicted the findings of the University of Auckland study. In the Monash University study, researchers reviewed over 850,000 police accident reports from the 1980s through the early 2000s in Victoria and Western Australia. Like those at UA, the researchers at Monash controlled the data for the effects of light conditions and vehicle type.

According to the study, silver and red cars actually saw an increased risk of car accidents, findings that directly contradicted those of the University of Auckland study. Monash University’s study also found that certain colors may have decreased crash risk, but the data was too noisy to establish a clear link.

Does Car Color Affect Crash Risk?

Based on the findings of the two studies, car color may affect crash risk, but the effect is so negligible that the potentially-added risk gets drowned out by other factors like driver behavior.

Still, car color may affect crash risks in a few ways:

Certain colors might blend into the background under certain light conditions
Some colors could become more difficult to see at certain times of the day
The brain may have problems judging the speed or distance of cars of some colors

It’s likely that you’ve had experiences that support these theories. A gray car might seem to come “out of nowhere” on a cloudy, rainy day. Driving into the glare of the sun, you might not spot a white or silver vehicle coming toward you, and a small, lightly-colored vehicle might look like it is standing still even as your vehicle approaches it at high speed.

Liability for Crashes Affected by Car Color

The color of the vehicle might affect your crash risk, but the liability for a crash ultimately falls on the at-fault driver regardless of such. In other words, a driver cannot escape liability for a car crash by blaming the crash on the color of the victim’s car.

Schedule a Free Consultation with Our Tampa Car Accident Lawyers

A car accident can happen regardless of the color of the cars involved. To discuss the compensation you can seek for your car crash injuries, Contact the Tampa attorneys in Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers at (813) 686-7588 for a free consultation. Our car accident lawyers are here to help.