 Fraccidents: The impact of fracking on road traffic deathsMinhong Xu and Yilan Xu Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2020, vol. 101, issue C Abstract: Hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a., fracking, requires intense truck trips to transport a large volume of water within a narrow time window, posing a safety threat to other road users. This paper examines how fracking-related trucking affects fatal crashes in North Dakota using the exogenous timing of fracking operations near a road segment. The results show that an additional post-fracking well within six miles of a road segment led to 8% more fatal crashes and 7.1% higher per-capita costs in accidents. Transport activities at wells’ other operational stages did not affect fatal crashes. These additional fatal crashes emerged mainly from collisions involving trucks, resulted from a higher traffic volume rather than a higher crash rate and occurred during daytime rush hours rather than during the rest of the day. Alcohol-involved drivers increased among these fatal crashes most likely due to their vulnerability to heavier fracking-induced traffic rather than more alcohol-involved truck drivers near the fracking sites. Keywords: Fracking; Fatal crashes; Truck traffic (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:101:y:2020:i:c:s0095069620300267 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102303 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier |
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