As Bill N pointed out in a comment, your claim is not true.
There are two factors that affect the speed of propagation of a mechanical wave. One is some measure of inertia, and the other is some measure of stiffness. The speed of sound is proportional to the square root of the ratio of these quantities. For example, if you compare aluminum with air, the aluminum has a much higher density, which would tend to lower the speed of sound, but aluminum is also much more incompressible than air, which would tend to raise it. The latter effect turns out to be bigger, so the speed of sound in aluminum is higher (about 5000 m/s).
Speed of light is universally constant so in denser media its collision increases so effective speed will decrease so how we distinguish this effective speed and 3×108 m/s.
This isn't something that should be described in terms of collisions. Maxwell's equations describe the speed of light in a medium as depending on its electrical properties: dielectric constant and magnetic permeability.