• An automobile accident may be the result of fatigue, drunken driving or distraction.wrecked car image by hazel proudlove from Fotolia.com
  
  Automobile accidents can injure drivers, passengers and pedestrians. In 2009, automobile accidents were attributed to 33,808 deaths in the United States, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Automobile accidents also cost Americans more than $200 billion a year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. A range of factors cause accidents, but there are four reasons common in the majority of them.
  
  

Alcohol

• Driving an automobile after consuming even a small amount of alcohol can impair a driver's ability to handle a vehicle and make correct judgments. The more alcohol a driver has imbibed, the worse his or her reactions will be, and the higher his or her chance of crashing. According to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), as many as three out of every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related traffic accident at some point in their lives.
  
  The amount of alcohol in someone's body at the time of a crash is measured by blood alcohol content (BAC). A BAC of 0.08 or more is discovered in a third of drivers who die in automobile accidents, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Drunken driving has led to stiff penalties not only in the United States but in other countries.
  
  

Speeding

• Speeding accounts for 18 percent of the total costs associated with crashes across the United States, according to the NHTSA. The faster an automobile is traveling, the less time a driver will have to react to changing circumstances. Speeding leads to almost a third of crashes involving fatalities, according to the Saferoads website.
  
  

Distractions

• Plenty of distractions can occur while a driver is on the road. Data from the NHTSA in 2009 places the number of accidents in the United States, per year, blamed on driver inattention at 1.5 million.
  
  

Drowsy Driving

• Driving while fatigued slows reaction times, meaning that he or she is less likely to take appropriate action when a potentially dangerous situation arises on the road. Drivers even might fall asleep at the wheel if they have missed a whole night's rest, for example. According to the NHTSA, drowsy driving results in more than 5,500 deaths a year.