- Authors
- Felix Roesel
- title
- The causal effect of wrong-hand drive vehicles on road safety
- Please use the following URL when quoting:
- https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-229840
- Series
- CEPIE Working Paper
- multivolume_volume0
- 15/17
- issn
- 2510-1196
- Abstract (EN)
- Left-hand drive (LHD) vehicles share higher road accident risks under left-hand traffic because of blind spot areas. Due to low import prices, the number of wrong-hand drive vehicles skyrockets in emerging countries like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. I identify the causal effect of wrong-hand drive vehicles on road safety employing a new “backward version” of the synthetic control method. Sweden switched from left-hand to right-hand traffic in 1967. Before 1967, however, almost all Swedish vehicles were LHD for reasons of international trade and Swedish customer demand. I match on accident figures in the period after 1967, when both Sweden and other European countries drove on the right and used LHD vehicles. Results show that right-hand traffic decreased road fatality, injury and accident risk in Sweden by approximately 30 percent. An earlier switch would have saved more than 4,000 lives between 1953 and 1966.
- Keywords (DE)
- Straßenverkehrsunfälle, Schweden, Natürliches Experiment, Synthetic Control Method
- Keywords (EN)
- Road accidents, Sweden, natural experiment, synthetic control method
- Classification (DDC)
- 330
- Classification (RVK)
- QC 000
- Standardizd keywords (GND)
- Volkswirtschaftslehre
- university_publisher
- Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden
- URN Qucosa
- urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-229840
- Qucosa date of publication
- 20.10.2017
- Document type
- research_paper
- Document language
- English
- licence