Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/170527 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CEPIE Working Paper No. 15/17
Publisher: 
Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE), Dresden
Abstract: 
Left-hand drive (LHD) vehicles share higher road accident risks under left-hand traffic because of blind spot areas. Due to low import prices, the number of wrong-hand drive vehicles skyrockets in emerging countries like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. I identify the causal effect of wrong-hand drive vehicles on road safety employing a new \backward version" of the synthetic control method. Sweden switched from left-hand to right-hand traffcin 1967. Before 1967, however, almost all Swedish vehicles were LHD for reasons of international trade and Swedish customer demand. I match on accident figures in the period after 1967, when both Sweden and other European countries drove on the right and used LHD vehicles. Results show that right-hand traffic decreased road fatality, injury and accident risk in Sweden by a proximately 30 percent. An earlier switch would have saved more than 4,000 lives between 1953 and 1966.
Subjects: 
road accidents
Sweden
natural experiment
synthetic control method
JEL: 
R41
K32
C53
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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