De-policing and fatal traffic crashes

Andrei Barbos

Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 250, issue C

Abstract: Traffic stops by the police have declined significantly in recent years in the United States, especially after 2020. It has been hypothesized that this trend could either be a lingering effect of the pandemic or a response to the increased levels of public attention to police abuse determined by several recent highly publicized killings of African Americans. Over the same period, the country experienced a significant increase in fatal traffic crashes. This paper aims to establish a direct link between de-policing and the increase in fatal traffic crashes over the past decade. To this aim, we employ an identification strategy used in the earlier literature to establish a causal relationship between highly publicized police killings and de-policing. Our analysis elicits an impact of de-policing on fatal traffic crashes around the time of the first instances of such high-profile police killings from 2014, and then a much larger effect after 2020.

Keywords: De-policing; Traffic Crashes; Highly publicized police killings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:250:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525001211

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112284

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