Ennis Marshall , Mohammadali Shirazi , John N. Ivan
{"title":"COVID-19 and transport safety","authors":"Ennis Marshall , Mohammadali Shirazi , John N. Ivan","doi":"10.1080/01441647.2023.2251684","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Transportation safety has substantially been impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. To contain the spread of the virus, governments around the world released guidelines (e.g. stay-at-home orders), which reduced or eliminated peoples’ daily commutes. These travel restrictions introduced new safety challenges for roadways and drivers, transit riders, and pedestrians and cyclists. Many cities, states, and countries around the world reported more severe crashes despite fewer drivers on the road. Transit ridership reduced as the risk of infection with COVID-19 kept transit users away, and walking and biking became more popular as they could be done individually in open air. This paper conducts a structured critical review to summarise and discuss studies around the world on roadway, transit, and pedestrian and bicycle safety since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For roadway safety, we further review studies that examine the direct measures of safety (e.g. crash statistics and models) as well as indirect or surrogate measures (e.g. speeding, aggressive driving, and reduced seatbelt usage). Surrogate measures, although indirectly, can affect the risk of crashes and contribute to the increase in frequency and severity of crashes. Findings are documented and discussed. We then provide suggestions on potential avenues for future research. Particularly, research studies show that the rate of severe injury crashes, as well as aggressive driving (e.g. speeding) increased in most places during the travel restrictions, and continued even after these restrictions were lifted. The safety of pedestrians and bicycles has also become increasingly important due to the increase in the number of users of these modes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48197,"journal":{"name":"Transport Reviews","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Transport Reviews","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S0144164723000934","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"TRANSPORTATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Transportation safety has substantially been impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. To contain the spread of the virus, governments around the world released guidelines (e.g. stay-at-home orders), which reduced or eliminated peoples’ daily commutes. These travel restrictions introduced new safety challenges for roadways and drivers, transit riders, and pedestrians and cyclists. Many cities, states, and countries around the world reported more severe crashes despite fewer drivers on the road. Transit ridership reduced as the risk of infection with COVID-19 kept transit users away, and walking and biking became more popular as they could be done individually in open air. This paper conducts a structured critical review to summarise and discuss studies around the world on roadway, transit, and pedestrian and bicycle safety since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For roadway safety, we further review studies that examine the direct measures of safety (e.g. crash statistics and models) as well as indirect or surrogate measures (e.g. speeding, aggressive driving, and reduced seatbelt usage). Surrogate measures, although indirectly, can affect the risk of crashes and contribute to the increase in frequency and severity of crashes. Findings are documented and discussed. We then provide suggestions on potential avenues for future research. Particularly, research studies show that the rate of severe injury crashes, as well as aggressive driving (e.g. speeding) increased in most places during the travel restrictions, and continued even after these restrictions were lifted. The safety of pedestrians and bicycles has also become increasingly important due to the increase in the number of users of these modes.
期刊介绍:
Transport Reviews is an international journal that comprehensively covers all aspects of transportation. It offers authoritative and current research-based reviews on transportation-related topics, catering to a knowledgeable audience while also being accessible to a wide readership.
Encouraging submissions from diverse disciplinary perspectives such as economics and engineering, as well as various subject areas like social issues and the environment, Transport Reviews welcomes contributions employing different methodological approaches, including modeling, qualitative methods, or mixed-methods. The reviews typically introduce new methodologies, analyses, innovative viewpoints, and original data, although they are not limited to research-based content.