Evaluating the Impact of Increased Fuel Cost and Iran’s Currency Devaluation on Road Traffic Volume and Offenses in Iran, 2011–2019

• Main Authors: Milad Delavary, Zahra Ghayeninezhad, Martin Lavallière
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-10-01
• Series: Safety
• Subjects: road related offenses; traffic safety; change-point detection; statistical methods; interrupted time series
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/6/4/49

Trends and underlying patterns should be identified in the timely distribution of road traffic offenses to increase traffic safety. In this study, a time series analysis was used to study the incidence rate of road traffic violations on Iranian rural roads. Road traffic volume and offenses data from March 2011 to October 2019 were aggregated. Interrupted time series were used to evaluate the impact of increasing fuel cost in June of 2013 and July of 2014 and the currency devaluation of Rial vs. US dollars in July of 2017 on trends and patterns, traffic volume, and number of offenses. A change-point detection (CPD) analysis was also used to identify singular changes in the frequency of traffic offenses. Results show a general decline in the number of overtaking and speeding offenses of −24.31% and −13.23%, respectively, due to the first increase in fuel cost. The second increase only reduced overtaking by 20.97%. In addition, Iran’s currency devaluation reduced the number of overtaking offenses by 26.39%. Modeling a change-point detection and a Mann-Kendall Test of traffic offenses in Iran, it was found that the burden of violations was reduced.