Driving Patterns Change Across Texas
The COVID-19 outbreak has drastically changed traffic patterns across the nation, but one thing hasn’t changed according to the Texas Department of Transportation. There is still at least one fatal accident daily on Texas roads. DentonRC.com reports.
At the end of March, traffic is down 41% compared to the end of February. Dallas traffic has dropped 37%. The reduction in driving has pushed some insurance companies to give back some premium costs since they are not allowed to amass large amounts of cash.
In March, 241 people died in crashes in Texas. Last year in March, there were 305 fatalities. According to the police, it’s hard to get real-time data on how many crashes and fatalities happen on the roads. It takes weeks for the investigations to finish and the data to make its way into the reporting systems.
There are also situations where someone might survive a crash but then die weeks later from those injuries. This can also skew the counts. But researchers are hard at work to figure out just how much the shelter-in-place orders have changed the amount of crashes and fatalities on Dallas roads.
Unlike the Great Recession, where the economic crash caused everyone to stay off the road, the COVID-19 outbreak has mostly kept commuters off the roads. Police have noticed an uptick in speeding drivers.
