Forecasting the road accident rate and the impact of the covid 19 on its frequency in the polish provinces

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the development of road transport, not only in Poland, but also worldwide. Limited mobility, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, had a large impact on the number of road accidents. The aim of the present study is to predict the number of road accidents in Poland and to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on variability of the number of road accidents. To attain the objective, annual data on the road accidents for every province in Poland were collected and analysed. Based on historical crash data, obtained from the police, the number of road accidents was forecasted for both pandemic and non-pandemic scenarios. Selected time series models and exponential models were used to forecast the number of accidents.