Traffic Incidents During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Step Towards Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals

de Barros Baltar, M. L.; de Abreu, V. H. S.; Ribeiro, G. M.; Ramos, F.

Currently, efforts have been made to develop studies that seek to ascertain the impact of the blockage implemented to combat the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in various economy sectors such as services, commerce, industry, civil construction, transportation and agriculture. Regarding the transport sector specifically, the blocks implemented in several countries around the world, to contain the virus, resulted in a significant reduction in the number of trips between points of origin and destination, with only the essential ones advised. This reduction should also impact on congestion and the number of traffic incidents. Thus, this chapter seeks to test the hypothesis that isolation, due to COVID-19, resulted in a significant drop in the occurrence of traffic incidents, through the performance of statistical analyzes. In addition, this possible reduction is discussed as being an important strategy to achieve several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We used traffic incidents data in the Rio de Janeiro city made available by Traffic Engineering Company of the city. The results obtained through various statistical methods indicate that although the accident profile has not undergone significant changes, there was a sharp drop in the number of calls for traffic incidents, which can positively impact nine SDGs and 23 targets of the 2030 Agenda. It is also worth mentioning that although the blocking state is not permanent, the findings found can be used to improve the potential for mitigating traffic incidents in the future and help in a future planning of incident management. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.