Exploring the Effect of Motor Traffic on Street Crime

Abstract

Traffic impacts street safety in multiple, often under-recognised ways. In addition to their polluting effect and the obvious risk they pose to pedestrians, we hypothesise that heavy motor traffic may also increase street-level crime. We elaborate this proposition drawing from a wide range of well-established crime theories, and test it using longitudinal data from Understanding Crime, and two-way fixed effects models. We find that perceptions of crime are higher in neighbourhoods affected by heavy motor traffic. More importantly, we find that these two phenomena are associated across time, suggesting a likely causal effect. Lastly, we note that the causal effect of motor traffic on street crime is likely mediated by collective efficacy; i.e. traffic erodes community ties, which in turn make informal surveillance less effective.