The number of car crashes, including fatal ones, in California has gone down by more than 50 percent during the state’s shelter-in-place order put in place to combat the coronavirus compared to the same period last year, according to a new UC Davis survey.
Between March 21 — two days after the order — and April 11, the average daily number of traffic accidents was about 450, compared to 1,128 during the same period last year.
Fatal car accidents went down from 496 to 237 over the same period from the previous year, according to the report.
The survey studied the traffic volume and determined that on certain highways, it decreased by 55 percent from last year.
In addition to the numbers of lives saved due to significantly less accidents on the roads, Fraser Shilling, co-director of the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis, told the Los Angeles Times that the monetary “savings are about $40 million a day. That's about $15 billion over a one-year period, which is almost the size of the state portion of California's transportation budget for a year.”
The survey made the calculations by using data from California Highway Patrol incident reports and the Federal Highway Administration, according to the Times.
Costs included, among others, property damage, treatment of injuries, lost time at work and emergency responses.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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