Weather and traffic accidents in the Czech Republic, 1979–2020

• Published in: Theoretical and applied climatology Vol. 149; no. 1-2; pp. 153 - 167
• Main Authors: Brázdil, Rudolf, Chromá, Kateřina, Zahradníček, Pavel, Dobrovolný, Petr, Dolák, Lukáš
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vienna Springer Vienna 01.07.2022; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Accidents; Annual; Annual rainfall; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric precipitations; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Atmospheric Sciences; Categories; Climate science; Climatology; Coefficients; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Fatalities; Fog; Gusty winds; Icing (Meteorology); Injuries; Mortality; Original Paper; Police; Rain; Rime; Snow; Snowfall; Statistical analysis; Traffic; Traffic accidents; Traffic accidents & safety; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Weather; Wind; Czech Republic
• ISSN: 0177-798X; 1434-4483
• DOI: 10.1007/s00704-022-04042-3

Police records, kept in the form of yearbooks, enabled analysis of the possible relationships between traffic accidents and the weather in the Czech Republic for the 1979–2020 period. These data were used to create annual series of traffic accidents in general, accidents with only material damage, numbers of people injured (seriously and slightly) and fatalities. Seven weather categories were used to characterise the weather at the time of an accident. The categories “rain”, “onset of rain and light rain”, “snowfall” and “glaze ice and rime” proved the most important, contributing to the highest numbers of accidents, fatalities and injured. Less important were “fog”, “gusty wind” and “other inclement weather”. The influence of the relative annual proportions of all weather categories on the numbers of all accident characteristics fluctuated generally between 10 and 30%. Annual numbers of accidents, fatalities and injured attributed to individual weather categories were statistically significant when correlated with series of annual numbers of days with fog, rain, snowfall, glaze ice and gusty wind. The closest relationship emerged for snowfall, with correlation coefficients between 0.76 and 0.94. The annual numbers of accidents, fatalities and injured attributed to several of the weather categories tended to decrease, especially in the two most recent decades. The discussion section concentrates on the broader context of the results obtained.