The city of Cali has one of Colombia’s highest road traffic fatality rates. In response, city authorities monitored changes in speed and road traffic deaths during the pandemic to better understand some of the trends and implications for local road safety policies.
The most concerning trend is that the severity of road traffic accidents may have increased during pandemic lockdown – a finding that helps justify the city’s newly strengthened speed-management measures.Measuring road safety in Cali before and during lockdownBetween 2017 and 2019, nearly 1000 people lost their lives to road crashes in Cali, with young people aged 20–29 years accounting for more than a fifth of those deaths.