The Unintended Consequences of Curfews on Road Safety

World Bank, Guadalupe Bedoya Arguelles, Amy Dolinger, Caitlin Fitzgerald Dolkart, Arianna Legovini, Sveta Milusheva, Robert Andrew Marty and Peter Ngwa Taniform

No 10393, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: During COVID-19, curfews spread like wildfire. Although their impact on curbing the spread of disease remains to be proven, curfews have the potential to bring about costs to society in multiple domains. This paper investigates the impact of curfews on road safety in an urban lower-middle-income setting. It shows that curfews lead to large reductions in crashes during the curfew hours when cars are off the road, but that these reductions can be fully offset by an increase in crashes during heavy traffic hours when people rush to get home before the curfew starts. These spillover effects result from a behavioral response to the curfew—increased driving speed—leading to higher crash rates. These findings forewarn that the use of curfews in future crises and pandemics should be carefully scrutinized and designed to minimize unintended negative effects.

Date: 2023-04-05
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/09945120 ... 3d119bb2e9028839.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:wbk:wbrwps:10393

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().