Starting from the second equilibrium equation in the BBGKY hierarchy under the Kirkwood superposition closure, we implement a new method for studying the asymptotic decay of correlations in the hard disk fluid in the high density regime. From our analysis and complementary numerical studies, we find that exponentially damped oscillations can occur only up to a packing fraction η * ∼ 0.718, a value which is in substantial agreement with the packing fraction, η ∼ 0.723, believed to characterize the transition from the ordered solid phase to a dense fluid phase, as inferred from Phys. 18, 1040Phys. 18, (1950]. Finally, we show that our method confirms the absence of any structural transition in hard rods for the entire range of densities below close packing.