An empirical analysis of the effect of economic activity and COVID-19 restrictions on road traffic accidents in Italy

Road traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death for the young segment of the population. Prevention strategies can mitigate the occurrence of road accidents, and successful actions should take into account the most relevant causes of accidents. We use a comprehensive dataset which reports information from police records on all road traffic accidents with injures and/or deaths in Italy between 2014 and 2020 to explore the relationships among economic forces, driving behaviours and accident frequency and severity. More specifically, the natural experiment setting provided by the 2020 COVID-19-related movement restrictions allows to capture the effect of traffic intensity and other factors on the frequency of serious accidents and mortality. The empirical findings confirm a direct relationship between the level of economic activity and the frequency of accidents, whereas there is no clear link with their severity. Instead, lockdown periods are associated with a relatively higher occurrence of fatal road traffic accidents, due to both riskier driving behaviours at times of reduced traffic, and changes in transportation habits reflected by a higher probability of accidents involving bicycles and motorcycles.