Exploring the effect of motor traffic on street crime

Summary

Traffic affects road safety in a variety of ways, which are often not sufficiently noticed. In addition to its environmentally harmful effects and the obvious risk to pedestrians, we hypothesize that heavy motor vehicle traffic can also increase crime in public spaces. We develop this assumption based on a wide range of established crime theories and test it using longitudinal data from Understanding Crime as well as two-way fixed effects models. We find that the perception of crime is higher in districts with a high volume of motor vehicle traffic. More importantly, the two phenomena are related over time, suggesting a likely causal effect. Finally, we would like to point out that the causal effect of motor vehicle traffic on crime in public spaces is probably mediated by collective effectiveness. In other words, transport weakens community ties, making informal monitoring less effective.