Car Color and Crash Risk: What We Know (and Don’t)

Have you ever been at an intersection around dusk and look to see if a car is coming from the other direction and register nothing, then proceed to begin to pull out when suddenly a car appears? You look closer and you see that the car’s color was almost the same as the pavement. If one takes note of car colors these days, one will notice that the vast majority of cars on the road are black, gray, or silver, and those colors blend into Chicago pavement, rain, and winter gloom. The question is do these neutral colors make collisions more likely? Additionally, if it seems obvious that brighter cars are easier to see, why don’t we have clear U.S. crash data on it? The Chicago personal injury lawyers of Zneimer & Zneimer P.C. wonder why.

You would think that the question of whether car colors affect crash frequency would have been comprehensively studied in the United States. It seems self evident that a red or orange car would be much more visible on the roadway than a black or gray car leading to fewer crashes. Surprisingly, there seems to have been very little research done on this topic in the United States.

While there seems to be no comprehensive studies done in the United States, there have been studies in other countries.

Australia (Monash University Accident Research Centre).
One of the best-known pieces of research is from Monash University, which analyzed police-reported crashes and compared 17 vehicle colors. Compared to white cars, they found:

Black cars had about a 12% higher crash risk
Gray cars had about an 11% higher crash risk
Silver cars had about a 10% higher crash risk
Blue and red were also associated with higher risk, though smaller than black/gray.
The authors’ bottom line: colors with lower visibility had higher crash risk, especially in daylight and at dawn/dusk. (Monash University)

New Zealand / BMJ case-control study.
A population-based study published in the BMJ looked at car color and serious-injury crashes. It essentially supported the same idea: vehicle conspicuity matters, and lighter/brighter colors tend to do better. Some early reporting focused on silver cars being safer, but later work—like the Monash analysis—found silver can actually perform worse than white when you control it more tightly, which tells us: methodology changes the exact number, but not the direction—hard-to-see cars do worse. (PMC)

Road-safety summaries.
Australian and road-safety program summaries that re-state the Monash data repeat the same figures: black +12%, gray +11%, silver +10%, all relative to white. (NRSPP Australia)

So if you want one sentence from the overseas data, it’s this: compared to white, dark/low-contrast cars are roughly 10–12% more likely to be in a police-reported crash.

Why you don’t see the same numbers from U.S. agencies

When you look at U.S. traffic-safety data—NHTSA’s FARS, CRSS, CISS, or their crash-reporting standards—you’ll notice they focus on impairment, speed, roadway type, time of day, restraint use, and now increasingly on ADAS/autonomous reporting. They don’t publish annual tables that say “black cars crash X% more than white cars.” That’s not because color doesn’t matter; it’s because:

Color isn’t standardized on U.S. crash reports the way speed, location, or injury severity are. Different states code color differently, which makes national-level color analysis messy. (NHTSA)
Other factors are bigger killers—alcohol, distraction, speeding—so research money goes there. NHTSA’s 2020 overview makes that clear. (crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov)
The U.S. fleet is dominated by neutral colors, so statistically it’s harder to separate “this color is popular” from “this color is dangerous.”
Color is viewed as a consumer/design choice, not a primary crash cause. Agencies prioritize what they can regulate.

So you’re right to say: “It seems obvious—why no U.S. study?” The answer is mostly data structure and priorities, not because visibility doesn’t matter. (NHTSA)

Do brighter cars crash less?

Putting the research together:

White and other high-visibility colors tend to be the reference group because they’re easy to see.
Black runs about 12% higher crash risk than white in the Monash data.
Gray runs about 11% higher.
Silver runs about 10% higher.
Some summaries of that research add that the risk gap gets worse at dawn/dusk—one restatement said black cars could be up to ~47% riskier than white in low light, which makes sense because that’s exactly when a dark car blends into the background. (thackermulvihill.com)

That’s a big clue: color’s effect is really a visibility effect. The worse the ambient light (Chicago in February, rain on I-90, dusk on Western Ave.), the more a dark vehicle disappears.

Then why are most cars black, gray, silver, or white?

You noticed something real: U.S. buyers overwhelmingly pick “pavement colors.”

Automakers push neutral palettes for resale and fleet buyers.
Consumers like “clean” modern grays and blacks.
Fleets, rideshare, and corporate buyers do the same.

From a visibility/safety lens, it’s a little odd—why would we choose colors that blend into asphalt and winter skies? But from a market lens it isn’t strange at all. Safety didn’t drive the color choice; fashion and resale did.

And that’s exactly why it would be useful for U.S. researchers to do what Australia did—because right now our roads are full of low-contrast vehicles.

What this means for an Illinois crash case

For a plaintiffs’ firm like Zneimer & Zneimer P.C., color is context, not a defense.

Illinois negligence still asks:

Did the defendant keep a proper lookout?
Were headlights on?
Was the driver distracted or speeding?
Were conditions (rain/dusk) such that extra care was needed?

A reasonably careful driver must see what is there to be seen. A defendant can’t hit a gray sedan at dusk and say, “Well, gray is hard to see”—especially when we have international research saying dark cars are harder to detect. That just confirms the driver needed to be more attentive, not less. (ScienceDirect)

Practical visibility tips for Chicago drivers

Run your headlights in rain, dusk, and on gray days—don’t wait for dark.
Keep lamps and glass clean—salt and slush reduce conspicuity.
If you’re buying a new car and you drive a lot in bad weather, consider a higher-contrast color.
Remember that in low-light conditions, you have less time to be seen—so make conservative turns and lane changes.

The Chicago personal injury lawyers of Zneimer & Zneimer P.C. have learned from experience that the top reason people give for getting into a collision is “I didn’t see the the plaintiff’s car” or “the plaintiff’s car came out of nowhere”. Visibility is a key factor in almost every case so you should always drive with your lights on.