Pandemic’s Silver Lining: Less Bloodshed on Commonwealth’s Roads
5:06 PM EDT on April 6, 2020
An uninjured driver stands next to the SUV she flipped over while driving on Route 1 in Peabody on March 18, 2020. Photo courtesy of the Massachusetts State Police.
Here's a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic: with widespread "stay at home" orders in place, motor vehicle operators have fewer opportunities to maim and kill their victims on the Commonwealth's streets.
In the 18-day period from March 15 and April 1, there were 1,044 crashes logged in the state's crash data portal. Drivers in those crashes caused at least 396 non-fatal injuries, and caused 11 deaths.
To be sure, that's a lot of unnecessary violence at a time of emergency when the state's hospitals are already struggling to handle a surge of COVID-19 cases. But it's nowhere near the amount of unnecessary violence that drivers would have caused in a more typical March.
In the same 18-day period of 2019, the state's records show that there were 3,922 crashes. Drivers in those crashes killed 18 people, and injured 1,301 more.
Those numbers suggest that while the overall number of crashes has declined dramatically, the proportion of crashes that involved injuries has gone slightly up: during this period of 2019, 33 percent of crashes involved an injury; in 2020, it was 38 percent.
The decline in the number of crashes has been particularly dramatic in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, as illustrated in the maps below:
A map of Boston-area crashes recorded from March 15, 2019 to April 1, 2019. Numerals in blue indicate clustered totals for crashes in each neighborhood; yellow circles indicate individual crashes. Courtesy of the MassDOT IMPACT crash database.
A map of Boston-area crashes recorded during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (from March 15 to April 1, 2020). Numerals in blue indicate clustered totals for crashes in each neighborhood; yellow circles indicate individual crashes. Courtesy of the MassDOT IMPACT crash database.
57 percent of the poll's respondents said that making the T free to ride would make them more likely to use transit; 37 percent said that fare-free service would make them "much more likely" to ride.