Survivability of accidents is a different concept than number of accidents. There are a number of technological advances that have teamed up to make what would have been a horrible fatality twenty years ago into something you could walk away from - crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, side-impact protection, multiple air bags, etc.
What we’re after here is the number of accidents - everything from bumping someone in stop-and-crawl traffic at the tollbooth up to careening off the side of the road at 80 MPH and breaking the car in half after smashing into a tree.
Around here, there are a lot of bumps and fender benders during rush hour, or what the traffic reporters call “trading paint” - I’m sure that most of them are due to plain old inattention - playing with the radio, yakking on the phone, pecking away on the Crackberry, etc.
Just yesterday, I saw a fairly short set of skid marks where someone didn’t curve when the road did - they just went straight along and plowed into the concrete “Jersey barrier” lining the median. I can’t think of a reason to do that other than not paying attention to driving - it’s not a blind curve or even close to being a surprise on flat, open road. Two of the roughly 4000-pound concrete barriers were destroyed and shoved back a few feet. As they say, “That’ll leave a mark!”