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Fuel prices and road deaths: motorcyclists are different

Crawford School of Public Policy
Photo by Pxfuel

Event details

PhD Seminar (Econ)

Date & time

Friday 26 February 2021
11.00am–12.00pm

Venue

Online via Zoom

Speaker

Tong Zhang

This study uses both data for 67 countries from 2000 to 2018 and for a panel of 51 states in the US from 1998 to 2018 to investigate the effect of gasoline prices on road traffic deaths by different user groups. This is the first study to compare the relationship between fuel prices and different road user groups’ death using international evidence and state-level data for the US. A smaller effect of gasoline prices on motorcycle deaths than that on car deaths is found using international evidence. However, a strong positive relationship between gasoline prices motorcycle deaths with an elasticity of 0.3 is found for the US. The findings imply that fuel excise plays a role in reducing overall road deaths. More attention should be paid to motorcyclist safety when fuel prices are high. Greater efforts should be made in the future to improve road safety because the trend toward driving electric vehicles may lead to more road deaths.

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