In the early weeks after the Covid19 pandemic hit the UK and the country was told to stay at home, there was a noticeable absence of motor vehicles on the roads. Instead, scores of cyclists, runners and walkers appeared, taking advantage of the one hour a day’s exercise that was permitted by the government and of the virtually empty roads on which to pursue their chosen activity.
By early April the amount of traffic on the roads was being compared with 1955 levels, when only a fraction of the population owned and drove motor vehicles.
Alistair Worth is the Managing Director of Mooneerams solicitors, a specialist firm of claimant personal injury solicitors based in Cardiff and whose practice handles a large number of personal injury cases for clients who have been injured in road traffic accidents. His firm has remained open for business throughout the pandemic, but with all members of staff, working remotely from home.
After lockdown was introduced, Alistair noticed an almost immediate drop off in the numbers of new clients contacting the firm to make road traffic accident claims.
“There were suddenly very few vehicles on the road indeed. It’s no coincidence that the numbers of collisions dropped off accordingly. It would have somewhat worrying if they had not!”
Alistair went on to say:
“During normal years there are alternating seasonally busy and quiet periods, where RTA claims are concerned. During the winter months, the numbers of new road traffic accident claims enquiries are at their highest – bad weather, dark nights that start in the late afternoon, the school run, more people choosing to drive their cars instead of walking or taking public transport – all of these are factors in there being high volumes of car accident claims.
Then in the summer months, the better weather, school children on holiday and foreign holidays being taken at times that straddle the best part of six months, sees fewer cars on the roads and safer driving conditions. That’s when the numbers of road accidents are fewer in number.
However, the last few months have been exceptional, although numbers of road traffic accident claims still haven’t completely dried up by any means.”
One reason why some road traffic accidents are still happening, may have something to do with reports of some of those motorists that are still on the roads, taking advantage of the quieter highways and byways to drive at dangerous speeds – a particularly lethal combination away from the motorways, where motorists are sharing the roads with an increased number of ‘vulnerable road users’, such as cyclists, motorcyclists, runners and walkers.
Alistair Worth is already noticing an increase in new enquiries from people with motor accident related injury claims.
“People are again starting to approach us daily with a view to making RTA claims. As lockdown is inevitably relaxed more and more over the coming weeks, traffic volumes will again rise. With this will come new factors to throw into the equation, such as whether people who have scarcely driven at all for three or more months will drive in exactly the same way that they did before lockdown. Will some people’s standard of driving have decreased, albeit temporarily, leading to an increase in accidents?
Will people be more or less patient when in traffic? Are we likely to see the numbers of cyclists, walkers and runners on our roads remaining high? How is the interaction between those vulnerable road users with an ever-increasing amount of motorised traffic returning to the roads, likely to pan out? ”
Just like Alistair Worth, the rest of us can only wait and see what the answers to those questions will be.
