(Press-News.org) PULLMAN, Wash. - Rush hour will likely return when pandemic lockdowns lift, but a new study suggests that congestion pricing--policies that charge tolls for driving during peak hours--could not only cure traffic jams but also convince motorists it is safe to buy smaller, more efficient cars.
Researchers from Washington State University and the Brookings Institution studied a sample of nearly 300 households in the Seattle area over a six-year period, finding that the more congested their commutes, the more likely they would buy bigger cars which they perceive as safer and more comfortable. They then modelled what congestion pricing might do to change car purchase decisions, finding it would reduce the market share of mid- to full-size SUVs by 8%.
Nationally, shrinking that number of large vehicles on the road would mean a 10% decline in the vehicle fatality rate, saving lives and $25 billion in associated costs as well as another 3% in improved fuel efficiency which amounts to nearly $10 billion in savings.
"We found that congestion pricing can reduce congestion on one side and reduce vehicle size on the other," said Jia Yan, WSU economics professor and corresponding author on the study published in the Journal of Econometrics. "Then the positive impacts of decreasing vehicle size mean that energy consumption and fatality rates can also drop."
In 1980, light trucks and SUVs made up only about 20% of new vehicles sold. In 2017, that figure had risen to 62%. Previous research indicates that traffic jams can lead to an "arms race" with drivers buying bigger and bigger cars for their perceived personal safety on congested highways when accidents are more likely to occur.
"If the highways you are travelling on are very congested, and you are sitting in a small car surrounded by many large SUVs, that may motivate you to purchase a larger car to protect yourself. It's logical reasoning," said Yan. "If the congestion decreases, and drivers can easily travel on a free-flowing highway that self-protection motivation drops."
Drivers are also drawn to the comfort of larger vehicles when they spend more time traveling on a highway, Yan added. When congestion decreases, the two motivations of safety and comfort also decrease, the authors found, and it's less likely that commuters will choose to purchase larger vehicles.
While many people perceive that having a large SUV or light truck will protect them personally, studies indicate that larger vehicles increase the risk of fatalities for the occupants of smaller cars in multi-vehicle accidents.
"There's always a trade-off between your own benefits and the cost to others in society," said Yan. "When people purchase a large vehicle, they don't always take in these externalities - these negative impacts - into consideration. They only consider their own self-protection, or whether they are comfortable when they're driving, so this is why we need better policy."
INFORMATION:
New research presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (held online, 10-13 May) shows that the obesity drug semaglutide reduces appetite, food cravings and energy intake in people given a meal where they could eat as much as they liked. The study is by Dr Dorthe Skovgaard, Novo Nordisk A/S (the manufacturer of the drug), Søborg, Denmark, and colleagues.
Semaglutide, in the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue drug class, is currently available at the dose of 1.0 mg injected once weekly for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and is under development for chronic weight management at the dose ...
An early study of a new experimental drug to treat obesity known as cagrilintide shows that, when combined with semaglutide 2.4 mg, the combination leads to more weight loss than semaglutide 2.4 mg alone and is well tolerated. This phase 1 study, which was recently published in The Lancet will be presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (held online, 10-13 May) by Dr Lone Enebo, Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark, on behalf of her colleagues. Novo Nordisk A/S is the manufacturer of both drugs in this study.
Combining medications with different modes of action may provide more effective treatment options for people with obesity. Weekly injections of cagrilintide, ...
Two-thirds of California prisoners who were offered a COVID-19 vaccine accepted at least one dose, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
"We found that many incarcerated people in California prisons were willing to be vaccinated for COVID-19," said Elizabeth Chin, the lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in biomedical data science. "This is an encouraging sign for other states at an early stage of rolling out vaccination programs in their prisons and jails."
The researchers also found that nearly half of those who initially turned down a COVID-19 vaccine accepted it when it was offered to them again. The finding is an important indication that vaccine hesitancy is not necessarily fixed.
Two-thirds ...
The 1949 letter by the physicist and Nobel laureate discusses bees, birds and whether new physics principles could come from studying animal senses.
It's a position still being realised within physics to this day, with a growing body of research and understanding of how animals such as birds and bees find their way around.
Now a study led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, discusses how recent discoveries in migratory birds back up Einstein's thinking 72 years ago.
The previously unpublished letter was shared with researchers by Judith Davys - Einstein had addressed ...
If you did not catch the flu this year -- and there is an overwhelming chance that you did not -- you have COVID-19 to thank.
It's a small consolation, given the enormously disruptive scope of the pandemic. But it's the focus of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health by two Concordia researchers and their colleagues that studies the 2020 influenza figures from Canada, the United States, Australia and Brazil. The authors show there is a clear relationship between the implementation of COVID-mitigation measures such as hand-washing, masking and social distancing and the spread of the annual flu.
They write that these preventive measures all but eliminated ...
The quest to create safer, more successful pregnancies is one of the top goals of modern science. While pregnancy is better understood today than ever before, with improvements in technology helping to lower the risk of negative outcomes, there is much researchers still don't know about a vital part of the pregnancy process: uterine fluid.
Secreted by glands in the uterus during pregnancy, uterine fluid is believed to play an important role in supporting a developing embryo by sending information from the uterus to the embryo, along with a host ...
In 2020, stores sold out of garden seed, coops and rabbit cages. Now, we have an idea how much protein people can grow in their backyards.
The 2020 meat shortages led many to wonder what to eat for protein when supply chains are disrupted. Some people turned to gathering eggs, raising animals and growing their own food. A team from Michigan Technological University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks found that the work is well worth it. In a new study published in Sustainability, the researchers looked at how a typical household with a typical backyard can raise chickens, rabbits or soybeans to meet its protein needs.
People eat a lot of protein in the U.S. and the average person needs 51 grams of ...
MINNEAPOLIS/ST.PAUL (05/12/2021) -- In a study recently published in END ...
DURHAM, N.H.-- A national report from the University of New Hampshire shows close to one and a half million children each year visit a doctor, emergency room or medical facility as a result of an assault, abuse, crime or other form of violence. This is four times higher than previous estimates based only on data from U.S. emergency rooms for violence-related treatment.
In their END ...
A portable, rapid testing platform can detect gonorrhea infections in patient samples in under 15 minutes, far faster than standard-of-care tests that can take hours or days. The platform accurately detected infections and determined resistance to a common antibiotic in 217 patient samples from sexual health clinics in Baltimore and Uganda. The technology's speed and low cost could empower quicker and more affordable gonorrhea testing in low-resource regions, as well as help combat the spread of drug-resistant strains. Rates of gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted ...
