Marijuana legalization and road safety: a panel study of US States

dc.contributor.authorYoung, Andrew R.
dc.date.accessioned2019-04-19T16:48:33Z
dc.date.available2019-04-19T16:48:33Z
dc.date.graduationmonthMay
dc.date.issued2019-05-01
dc.description.abstractPolicymakers and the public are concerned about the road safety implications of legalizing marijuana. Despite the more than two decades of data since California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use, there has been surprisingly little research on this question. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, this research combines twenty-three years of state traffic data with information on the contemporaneous legal status of marijuana, for both medical and recreational use, to estimate two models of road safety. First, while treating both the state and the year as fixed effects, the resulting panel regression model estimates that the legalization of medical or recreational marijuana is not a predictor of the number of fatalities per 100,000 vehicle-miles traveled. Second, due to limitations in the regression model, a difference-in-difference analysis was conducted over the same period and found no relationship between legalization of medical marijuana and the number of fatalities per 100,000 vehicle-miles traveled. These findings suggest that concerns of policy makers and the public that legalizing marijuana will worsen road safety are not ungrounded at this time. According to the models, the recent upward trend of traffic fatality rates nationwide is not a result of medical marijuana legalization. In fact, the legalization of marijuana is not found to be a predictor of traffic fatalities.
dc.description.advisorGregory L. Newmark
dc.description.degreeMaster of Regional and Community Planning
dc.description.departmentDepartment of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning
dc.description.levelMasters
dc.description.sponsorshipDwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2097/39647
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherKansas State University
dc.rights© the author. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
dc.subjectPanel Study
dc.subjectDifference-in-Differences
dc.subjectMarijuana Legalization
dc.subjectRoad Safety
dc.titleMarijuana legalization and road safety: a panel study of US States
dc.typeReport

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