“Covid-19 impact on mobility and safety” for the University of Valencia (2020-2021)

Covid-19 is a major pandemic with large number of victims, which can be compared to the road traffic crashes pandemic (1,35 million fatalities and 50 million injuries per year globally). However, road traffic crashes pandemic has never being seeing by the global population and the Governments as such a serious health problem and traffic safety measures have never being considered so seriously and massively by the Governments neither accepted by the people, as with Covid-19 pandemic measures.

The effectiveness of Covid-19 pandemic massive measures for controlling the spread of the disease can be an excellent example for the need of more serious and massive measures on traffic accidents pandemic. Whereas road infrastructure safety improvement and safer vehicles penetration require several years before witnessing major results, traffic behaviour can certainly be controlled and improved much faster, if social acceptance is raised and political will is strong and sincere. Especially, managing efficiently (by police enforcement and massive campaigns) the five major traffic killers (speeding, mobile-phone-use, drink-and-drive, seat belt and helmet non-use) can be proved highly beneficial with a great number of lives saved even at short term.