‘Back to the past’: The decline and rebound in traffic accident numbers in Catalonia in the context of COVID-19 lockdown and post-lockdown

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown and mobility restrictions on interurban traffic accidents in Catalonia, Spain, and how accident numbers and their spatiality changed during the post-lockdown and beginning of the ‘new normal’ period. The authors compared the number of interurban traffic accidents in 2020 with those in the four previous years for the entire period (1 January – 30 September 2020) and for three different subperiods: pre-lockdown, lockdown, and post-lockdown. The results indicate a reduction of almost two-thirds for the entire lockdown period but of more than three-quarters for the hard-lockdown period (first seven weeks). There was an evident rebound in the number of accidents, starting before the end of the lockdown, within a context of flexibilization of mobility restrictions. In September 2020, the number of traffic accidents was the same as in September in the years 2016–2019. The authors conclude that several short-term benefits related to mobility restrictions following the COVID-19 outbreak were lost rapidly in the ‘new normal’ period. They also conclude that the results indicate that some tourist and rural areas have suffered a particular rebound in numbers of accidents during the post-lockdown period.

KEYWORDS:

• Catalonia
• COVID-19
• lockdown
• ‘new normal’ period
• traffic accidents

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the Directorate-General of Fire Prevention, Extinction and Rescue of the Catalan Government for providing data on traffic accidents.

Notes

1 The period started on 6 January, and the average value for 2016–2019 was calculated from 4 January 2016, 9 January 2017, 8 January 2018, and 7 January 2019. This allowed us to compare the data in the plots.