When you go car shopping, you’ll have several crucial considerations. For instance, you must choose whether you want a brand-new car or a used one. You may also look into certified pre-owned vehicles. You must figure out whether you should buy or lease a vehicle. You can put down quite a bit of money, or maybe just a little. You might also look into getting a car loan from a credit union or bank if you don’t have very much money at the moment. And then there’s the color…
You should also consider what color car you should get. You might do so because you like a certain color. Some people don’t realize that car color can impact your crash risk, though.
We’ll discuss that in detail right now.
How Car Color Impacts Crash Data
Let’s look at Fort Worth, Texas, for a moment. The metropolitan area has plenty of businesses and traffic. Multiple highways run through the city and around it. The car wrecks there keep the police busy most of the time.
Fort Worth saw 17,547 car wrecks in 2021. That’s about average. If you look at city data, you can expect similar yearly numbers, with some minor fluctuation.
Sticking with Fort Worth, stats indicate that 71% of crashes occurred during the day. The other 29% happened at night.
Not so many people drive at night since they mostly work during the day. You might have some night owls driving around, but not so many.
Even on clearer roads without as much traffic, though, if you’re in a black car, the data indicates that you’ll more likely crash. Whether you cause the crash in a black car if you’re doing some nighttime driving or if someone else hits you doesn’t seem important.
The car’s color matters because, at night, you can’t see black vehicles so well. Maybe you didn’t think about this when you purchased the vehicle, but if you’re driving at night, the car’s black color can conceal it on poorly lit streets. Even if you have your lights on, a driver might not see you as well if you’re on a dimly lit section of the road.
What Other Car Colors Might Cause Problems?
As a driver, you might also encounter rainy or foggy conditions. If you’re driving, and there’s fog, mist, or rain, you’re already facing an uphill battle. Many accidents happen in these conditions, no matter what vehicle color you choose.
If you’re in a gray or white car, though, it can more easily blend into the fog or mist. In the rain, you can’t see a light gray car so easily.
You might consider this when you’re selecting a car’s color. More garish colors might appeal since you can see them more easily in rainy, misty, snowy, or foggy conditions.
You can also avoid driving in these conditions if you can help it. If you must drive to work or you’re picking the kids up after soccer practice or some other activity, you may have little choice in the matter.
Why You Should Consider Brighter Car Colors
Several reputable entities have done car color studies over the years. They often reach contradictory conclusions, though. There’s no real consensus about what car colors put you in danger and which ones do not.
We’ve mentioned car colors and various weather conditions, and also vehicle colors and night driving versus day driving. If you get a car with bright colors, that probably gives you an edge if you’re driving in daylight with optimal weather conditions.
If you get a bright red car, a yellow one, a green one, or anything along those lines, that might help you avoid accidents. You can’t miss those colors. They’re bright spots in another driver’s field of vision.
You may also see some cars on the road with iridescent paint jobs. They sparkle and shine like an exotic beetle’s carapace.
Maybe you like that look, or perhaps you think it’s a little silly. You can’t deny one thing, though: you can’t very well miss them. If you drive one, then the drivers around you must take notice. You might consider getting a vehicle with a flashy color for that reason.
What’s the Bottom Line?
You should certainly consider car color. There’s a problem regarding the color-focused studies that various entities conduct, though. Since they mostly disagree about the safest and most dangerous car colors, you can’t consider one the leading authority.
For instance, many studies conclude that black cars cause more accidents. You might assume that’s because if you’re driving one at night, other drivers can’t see you as well.
That notion might prove inaccurate, though. Maybe black cars cause more accidents simply because black remains a popular color, so you see more black vehicles on the road versus yellow or purple ones.
When selecting your next car, you might look at the color and the various studies that reputable entities conduct, but you can also stay safe not so much by picking one color over another but by how and when you drive.
If you avoid driving at night, then you’ll have better visibility. Day driving lets you see what’s around you better. If you avoid driving during bad weather, like snow, rain, fog, sleet, etc., you can likely prevent car wrecks that way as well.
You can also avoid speeding, distracted driving, or anything like that. If you obey all traffic rules and use all the excellent safety technology you can find in most modern vehicles, you should avoid car wrecks. That might come into play more than your car’s color.
You can certainly still look at accident reports and studies involving a car’s color, but you should not make your decision about what vehicle you’ll get next with that data alone. If you can drive safely and selectively, you might avoid car crashes more that way. You can get any vehicle color you want, provided you stay attentive and drive defensively.
Featured photo by Mike B on Pexels.
