Estimating the effect of air pollution on road safety using atmospheric temperature inversions

Does air quality influence road safety? We estimate the effect of increased air pollution on the number of road traffic accidents in the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2014. To address concerns of spurious correlation we exploit atmospheric temperature inversions as a source of plausibly exogenous...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of environmental economics and management Vol. 98; p. 102250
Main Author Sager, Lutz
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Inc 01.11.2019
Subjects
Air pollution
Road safety
Traffic accidents
Air pollution
Traffic accidents
Road safety
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Does air quality influence road safety? We estimate the effect of increased air pollution on the number of road traffic accidents in the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2014. To address concerns of spurious correlation we exploit atmospheric temperature inversions as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in daily air pollution levels. We find an increase of 0.3–0.6% in the number of vehicles involved in accidents per day for each additional 1 μg/m3 of PM2.5. The finding suggests that less safe roads may present a large and previously overlooked cost of air pollution. The results are robust to a number of specifications and across various sub-samples.
ISSN:0095-0696
1096-0449
DOI:10.1016/j.jeem.2019.102250