Study links fracking to increased traffic accidents, fatalities
Marie Donlon | March 02, 2020Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests that hydraulic fracturing is linked to an increase in traffic-related accidents and fatalities in so-called fracking “boomtowns.”
In addition to the environmental concerns surrounding fracking, wherein a mixture of chemicals and water are forcibly injected into rock for the purpose of extracting oil and gas, researchers are also suggesting that traffic hazards have increased in fracking boomtowns.
This, according to researchers, is due to an uptick in traffic associated with fracking operations. Large trucks tasked with hauling vast amounts of wastewater from fracking operations reportedly increase traffic in and around fracking sites, generally in regions where the infrastructure is not equipped to handle the increased traffic burden. As such, the researchers believe there has been a corresponding increase in traffic accidents and fatalities in those regions.
To demonstrate, researchers examined the number of fatal traffic accidents that occurred in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota between 2006 and 2014 in relation to fracking activity in that region. According to the findings, researchers determined that there was an 8% increase in fatal crashes that occurred within six miles of fracking wells.
A possible solution recommended by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team is to tax each well or to create tolls for transporting the wastewater. The study also recommends creating an alert or warning system to let local drivers know about an increase in fracking vehicle activity at those locations. Likewise, the researchers also recommend that the oil and gas industry improve overall safety by redistributing traffic loads to off-peak hours or to develop onsite wastewater disposal or treatment facilities in lieu of transporting the water.
The research appears in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
First time I've heard the argument that fracking causes traffic accidents...
As an engineering graduate of the University of Illinois, I am astounded they would waste money on such frivolous ‘research’. Fracking doesn’t cause more accidents, more TRAFFIC causes more accidents, regardless of whether the increased traffic is from fracking or some other cause.
They have successfully wasted money to establish a relationship between two items for which no cause & effect exist.
A new study? More like a hit job. Come on CR4. You can do better than this.
"These additional crashes emerged mainly from collisions involving trucks, resulting from a higher traffic volume rather than a higher crash rate and occurring during daytime rush hours rather than during the rest of the day. Alcohol-involved crash drivers increased most likely due to their vulnerability to heavier fracking-induced traffic rather than more alcohol-involved truck drivers near the fracking sites."
Seems straight-forward to me...
Eating causes obesity
Drinking causes alcoholism
Sex causes babies
Increased traffic causes increase traffic accidents! Who knew?
It's pretty telling about the group doing the study. The first solution for the issue, is a tax.
In reply to #6
Amen to that! Somewhere in the students statistics class they missed the point that correlation is not causation. The fact they came up with a tax as the solution tells me they've been properly indoctrinated in their wasted social studies classes.
Sounds like a candidate for an Ig-Nobel prize from the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Did you know that herring communicate by flatulence or that the world looks different if you bend down and look at it upside down between your legs?