Pedestrian Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID pandemic provides a natural experiment examining how a 50–60% reduction in pedestrian activity might lead to a reduction in pedestrian deaths. We assessed whether the reduction in pedestrian deaths was proportional to a one-to-one matching presumed in statistics correlating mobility with fatality. The primary analysis examined New York (largest city in US), and the validation analysis examined Toronto (largest city in Canada). We identified pedestrian activity in each location from the Apple Mobility database, normalized to the baseline in January 2020. We calculated monthly pedestrian deaths from the Vision Zero database in each city with baseline data from 3 prior years. We found a large initial reduction in pedestrian deaths during the lockdown in New York that was transient and not statistically significant during the summer and autumn despite sustained reductions in pedestrian activity. Similarly, we found a large initial reduction in pedestrian deaths during the lockdown in Toronto that was transient and not sustained. Together, these data suggest the substantial reductions in pedestrian activity during the COVID pandemic have no simple correlation with pedestrian fatality counts in the same locations. An awareness of this finding emphasizes the role of unmeasured modifiable individual factors beyond pedestrian infrastructure or other structural contributors.