Travel in the United States Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety · 2021 · AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study quantifies changes in U.S. travel behavior from July 2019 through December 2020 to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, stay-at-home orders, and economic recession. While aggregate data sources like vehicle counts established the magnitude of travel reduction, this research addresses a gap in understanding the composition of travel, specifically regarding traveler demographics, trip purposes, and transportation modes. The analysis aims to provide detailed context for traffic safety implications by examining how different populations and trip types were affected. The researchers utilized data from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety’s New American Driving Survey, which interviews a representative sample of U.S. residents aged 16 and older daily about their previous day’s travel. The study analyzed 7,873 respondents interviewed between July 2019 and December 2020. To account for sampling variability and outliers, the authors employed a hurdle model to estimate the probability of taking any trips versus staying home, and the number of trips for those who traveled. Adjusted outcomes were derived using predictive margins, controlling for demographics, race, ethnicity, Census region, driver status, and day of the week. Results indicate that the mean daily number of trips dropped by 19% in March 2020 and 40% in April 2020 relative to the second half of 2019, before stabilizing at 20–25% below pre-pandemic levels for the remainder of 2020. The proportion of people staying home all day rose from a pre-pandemic average of 10–14% to 26% in April 2020. Reductions were most severe for shared transportation modes; transit, taxi, and rideshare usage fell by over 60%, whereas personal vehicle driving decreased by 46% in April. Work-related travel declined more sharply than non-work travel. Demographically, adults aged 65 and older reduced trips by 53% in April, while those with higher educational attainment saw larger reductions than those with lower education, likely due to remote work opportunities. Metropolitan residents also reduced travel more significantly than non-metropolitan residents during the initial months. The findings highlight that travel reductions were not uniform across the population or trip types. The study concludes that these uneven changes provide critical context for the paradoxical rise in traffic fatalities in 2020, which increased by 7.2% despite lower overall travel volumes. The authors suggest that factors such as increased speeding due to reduced congestion, decreased law enforcement, and higher impairment rates among the remaining drivers may explain this trend. Understanding these specific shifts in travel composition is essential for future traffic safety research and policy interventions beyond the pandemic.

Key finding

Daily travel in the United States dropped by approximately 40% in April 2020 and remained 20% to 25% below 2019 levels for the rest of the year, with work-related and shared transit trips decreasing more sharply than personal vehicle trips.

Methodology

survey

Sample size: 7873

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_aaa_foundation on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• exposure measurement