Do Speed Cameras Save Lives?

Cheng Tang

SERC Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: I evaluate whether speed enforcement cameras reduce the number and severity of traffic accidents by penalizing drivers for exceeding speed limits. Relying on micro data on accidents and speed cameras across Great Britain, I find that installing these devices significantly enhance road safety. Putting another 1,000 cameras reduce around 1130 collisions, 330 serious injuries, and save 190 lives annually, generating net benefits of around £21 million. However, these effects are highly localised around the camera and dissipate over distance, and there is suggestive evidence of more collisions away from the camera, illustrating the possible limitations associated with fixed speed cameras.

Keywords: accidents; injuries; fatalities; speed camera; speeding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 I18 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea, nep-ict, nep-law, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/sercdp0221.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do speed cameras save lives? (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:sercdp:0221

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SERC Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().