According to the new DOT report, adverse weather brings $3,8 billion in financial losses annually. Snow and ice are responsible for 50% percent of the time lost to traffic in a result of bad weather.
It is not just the time conditions like rain, wind, floods and fog, but the decreases in speed that long up to four hours after bad weather has occurred and even a few hours before.
The study shows that in less populated regions with less economic intensity weather conditions have less effect than in areas with better developed economies and greater population. The bad weather effect on traffic was measured in 13 regions.
The new study is a follow up to the national estimate of adverse weather’s effect on trucking, presented in 2012. The new estimate shows the lower national cost compared with $8-9 billion estimated in 2012 study.
The methods and data of the research have their limitations that should be considered. Weather is associated with traffic speeds based on county, so some roadways might not be directly affected by weather event. The timeframe used for estimating weather event effects was 8 hours instead of the actual duration of the event. Also, only 1500 miles of road were studied, which is less than 1% of the National Highway System.
Even though the experiment didn’t encompass all the roads, its very interesting that weather had such an impact on travel and financial losses! I would’ve never thought weather resulted in so much money loss!