Shimizu Kazuki, Ueda Peter, Ghaznavi Cyrus, Sakamoto Haruka, Nomura Shuhei
Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT, UK.
Healthcare (Basel). 2022 May 6;10(5):860. doi: 10.3390/healthcare10050860.
Beginning in April 2020, social distancing measures were implemented to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. We assessed whether traffic accident rates had decreased from April 2020 to December 2021 as compared with previous years. The analysis included 2,934,477 traffic accidents, and the trend of decreasing rates of traffic accidents in recent years and seasonal fluctuations in traffic accidents were considered. The yearly change in the traffic accident rate between 2015 and 2019 was estimated, and the traffic accident rate in 2020 and 2021 was predicted. This was followed by the comparison of observed vs. predicted traffic accident rate. In 2020, the observed vs. expected rates of traffic accidents were lower in April to December 2020, and the rate of traffic accidents in Japan was 30-40% lower in April-May 2020 than would be expected based on trends from previous years. In 2021, rates of traffic accidents remained lower than expected between January and November, but the magnitude of decrease was not as pronounced. These findings could be explained by social distancing policies, including the declaration of the state of emergency, and the relaxation of public health and social measures over time.
从2020年4月开始，日本实施了社交距离措施以缓解新冠疫情。我们评估了与前几年相比，2020年4月至2021年12月期间交通事故率是否有所下降。该分析涵盖了2934477起交通事故，并考虑了近年来交通事故率下降的趋势以及交通事故的季节性波动。估计了2015年至2019年期间交通事故率的年度变化，并预测了2020年和2021年的交通事故率。随后对观察到的交通事故率与预测的交通事故率进行了比较。2020年，2020年4月至12月观察到的交通事故率低于预期，2020年4月至5月日本的交通事故率比根据前几年趋势预期的低30%-40%。2021年，1月至11月期间交通事故率仍低于预期，但下降幅度不那么明显。这些发现可以通过包括宣布紧急状态在内的社交距离政策以及随着时间推移公共卫生和社会措施的放松来解释。
