Last month, AAMI published its Annual Crash statistics including state-by-state comparisons of the most common types of events. The National averages have remained reasonably consistent year to year in most categories, with the most common cause, nose-to-tail collisions, hovering between 27% and 29%. Second on the list is the “parked car ding” which by contrast, has risen steadily nationally from 15% in 2004 to 21.4% in the latest study.
Tasmania has taken line honours with car park bingles topping its list with 27.1% of reported incidents. Add to that “Collisions with stationary objects” at 22.5%, and this means that Tassie drivers are more often entangled with the unmoving rather than moving vehicles!
“Tasmania doesn’t have the high levels of traffic density or congestion as major cities so it’s not surprising that the Apple Isle has a higher rate of prangs with parked cars and stationary objects,” said AAMI spokesperson, Reuben Aitchison.
“Crashes with stationary objects in Tasmania tend to involve bollards at shopping centres and walls and columns in garages. A lot of these types of accidents tend to happen in shopping centre car parks where turning circles are a lot tighter than they once were,” explained Mr Aitchison.
As we noted in our September blog, it’s probably not the size of the space that has changed, but rather the average size of vehicles trying to park in them!