Special Report: Impact of COVID19 on California Traffic Accidents
Using observations of reported traffic incidents in our real-time “California Highway Incident Processing System” (CHIPS), the Road Ecology Center has estimated the reduction in traffic incidents on state highways and rural roads that has resulted from the Governor’s “shelter in place” order. The authors estimate that since the order went into effect, collisions and especially injury and fatality collisions have been reduced by half, from ~1,000 collisions and ~400 injury/fatal accidents per day to 500 and 200 per day, respectively. They also found that animal-related incidents did not experience the same reduction. They found that traffic volumes were up to 60% lower on certain highways after the order compared to a similar period prior to the order, which may account for the reduced number of collisions. The authors highlight collision and injury/fatality hotspots on California highways since the shelter in place order went into effect and for a similar period in 2019. All data were derived from California Highway Patrol incident reports. This report includes maps of incident hotspots, and discusses this unexpected benefit of the shelter in place order.
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Corporate Authors:
University of California, Davis
Road Ecology Center
Davis, CA United States -
Authors:
- Shilling, Fraser
- Waetjen, David
- Publication Date: 2020-4-1
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; Tables;
- Pagination: 8p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: COVID-19; Crash injuries; Traffic crashes; Traffic safety; Traffic speed; Traffic volume
- Identifier Terms: California Highway Patrol
- Geographic Terms: California
- Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01738052
- Record Type: Publication
- Source Agency: UC Berkeley Transportation Library
- Files: BTRIS, TRIS
- Created Date: Apr 27 2020 9:11AM