eli5 “You’re more likely to be in an accident in a red car”

Question

I heard this statement and it confused me. The explanation was more red cars have accidents than other cars. But surely that doesn’t translate to “I personally am more likely to have an accident if I drive a red car than a blue car today”? Assuming there’s nothing inherently about red cars that makes them more likely to crash. I’m struggling with the maths theory behind it.

Edit to clarify my question: does the statistic that “red cars have more accidents” translate to the statement that “I, personally, all other things being equal, am more likely to have an accident if I drive a red car than a blue one”?

In: 10

Answer 1

Statistically, yellow cars have less accidents.

Followed by colored ones like red, green, blue(light blue I guess). And white cars are just above this or below, I can’t remember.

The worse are of course dark grey and black.

It all comes to visibility, the easier to spot the easier to avoid to collide with.

Idk what statistic someone is using on you but it doesn’t make sense.

Seems to me the only explaination is that they are comparing pears and apples: for example if in your sample all the sport cars are red, of course red is going to have more accidents. But at that point, statistically it doesn’t make sense. You compare car types, or colors between same car type, and so on. Seems who made that statistic is lazy.

Anyway, yes the statistic suggests that if you drive a safe color you will be spotted better:

Preventing people to cut you cause they didn’t see you.

Allowing people to dodge a bad maneuver of yours because they see it coming sooner.

So yes you are safer in a safer color. In magnitude, we are talking of small numbers, like plus or minus 10% maximum.

Doesn’t make sense to me an assurance company use this logic. Should be the opposite, the more bright cars around the less accidents. What this mindset will do is to shift bad drivers to non-red colors until the statistics change and then chase the data forever as every action will just change the problem’s container, and never solve it.