Mobility Management Traffic Safety Impacts

This paper investigates the traffic safety impacts of mobility management (also called Transportation Demand Management). It analyzes the relationships between vehicle mileage and crashes. Although many factors affect crash rates, all else being equal a change in total mileage tends to cause a similar change in total crashes. Conventional planning often overlooks the traffic safety impacts that result from changes in mileage. As a result it tends to undervalues the costs of policies that cause mileage to increase, and undervalues mobility management programs that reduce mileage. Increased safety appears to be one of the largest potential benefits of mobility management, and mobility management programs are likely to be among the most cost effective ways to improve traffic safety.