Why nearby crashes show up so often
A crash count answers a simple question: where did crashes happen? It does not, by itself, tell you how risky each mile of driving was. If someone drives many short trips near home but only occasionally travels far away, more of their total road time—and therefore more opportunities for a crash—will be concentrated nearby.
This is an example of exposure: the amount of time or distance people spend in situations where an event can occur. To compare danger between places, researchers need a denominator such as miles driven, trips taken, or time on the road. A raw count leaves that context out.
The map of a routine
Home is often the starting point and destination for errands, commutes, school runs, and visits. Those trips repeatedly use the same nearby streets. A driver may pass through a local intersection hundreds of times while visiting a distant road only once. Even if each mile carries the same risk, the familiar area can account for more crashes simply because the driver spends more miles there.
That does not mean every nearby road is equally safe, or that location never matters. Road design, traffic speed, visibility, and the kinds of journeys people make can all affect crash risk. But a count of crashes near home cannot separate those factors from the basic fact that people often drive near home more often.
What the statistic can—and cannot—tell you
“Most crashes happen close to home” may describe where crashes cluster, but it does not establish that a driver is more likely to crash on a particular nearby mile than on a distant one. For that comparison, the number of crashes must be weighed against how much driving occurred in each area.
The practical takeaway is less dramatic than a danger-zone warning: your usual routes appear frequently in your personal crash map because they make up so much of the map in the first place.
