So far, it appears there’s good reason to be concerned about car speeds. The crash rate in cities is not declining at the same rate as congestion, according to experts, and the severity of crashes appears to be worsening.

“If you get rid of congestion, then the number of accidents decrease but the severity increases because they are going at a higher rate of speed in general,” Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at INRIX, told Smart Cities Dive. Nationally, the drop in driving has not fallen proportionally to the rate of crashes, according to Pishue??.

Chattanooga, TN has seen about a 30% to 50% decrease in traffic since mid-March, Blythe Bailey with the Chattanooga Department of Transportation told Smart Cities Dive. But the rate of crashes has not fallen at the same pace, he said.
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