Road Traffic Injury impacts of Clean Air /Low Emission Zones Welcome to MORE 2026

UoW researcher: Jamie Furlong

Researcher Lead: Anthony A Laverty (Imperial College London), Ahmad Alkhatib (Imperial College London)

Funding: Road Safety Trust, £193,825  

This project is being led by Anthony A Laverty at Imperial College London with support from Jamie Furlong in the Active Travel Academy, University of Westminster. It examines the road traffic safety impacts of Clean Air Zones (CAZs) implemented in English cities outside London. While CAZs are primarily designed to improve air quality by discouraging the use of more polluting vehicles, they may also influence travel behaviour, traffic volumes and the safety of road users.

Using national road traffic injury data from the STATS19 database, the project is applying sophisticated quasi experimental methods to estimate how road traffic injuries changed following the introduction of CAZs across England, from Bristol to Bradford.

By comparing trends inside CAZs with carefully matched control areas and accounting for wider temporal trends, the analysis aims to identify both immediate impacts following implementation and longer-term changes in road safety outcomes. It aims to understand whether there are positive impacts and, if so, to what extent this changes over time following implementation.

KEY WORDS: road safety; clean air zones; road traffic injuries