COVID and Transportation Risks

I made a statement yesterday on Twitter in response to the plane crash yesterday in South Korea.

While it is possible that a bird strike was the root cause and destroyed avionics, there are a few remaining questions. “‘At this point there are a lot more questions than we have answers. Why was the plane going so fast? Why were the flaps not open? Why was the landing gear not down?’ said Gregory Alegi, an aviation expert and former teacher at Italy’s air force academy.” Normally, a flight would circle and jettison fuel as to reduce the risk of explosion and fire, which also allows the airport the 20 minutes needed to deploy fire retardant foam and nets. This may have been skipped though if the strike led to fire or toxic fumes in the cabin

“Joo Jong-wan, a director at the transport ministry, said during a briefing, ‘Typically, engine failure and landing gear failure are not directly linked. Even if the landing gear doesn’t deploy automatically, there are manual overrides. The exact cause will need to be determined through an analysis of the flight data recorder.'”

The aircraft made one go around after the initial attempt at landing. On the second attempt, it contacted the runway at about the halfway point, which left no space for the aircraft to skid to a stop before the end of the runway. That raises another question as to why it didn’t land at the beginning of the runway.

This all could be bad luck that couldn’t be avoided. However, there is plenty of evidence of that COVID may interfere with transportation safety.

Aviation incidents are relatively rare, although it does seem like there have been many more the past few years. However, motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) provide us with a much larger data set that provides clues and make a good surrogate measure.

Aside from that, we already have evidence from aviation. Military Pilots Reported 1,700% More Medical Incidents During the Pandemic. The Pentagon Says They Just Had COVID.

Other research of concern has to do with brainwave patterns on EEGs. These changes were associated with concentration problems, fatigue, and reduced mental resilience, which could affect their ability to perform high-stakes tasks.

MVAs

First, we already know that other infections can increase MVA risks. “The result…suggests that subjects with latent toxoplasmosis had a 2.65 (C.I.95= 1.76–4.01) times higher risk of a traffic accident than the toxoplasmosis-negative subjects.”

This is MVA fatality rates. As you can see in every metric, they have been overall falling for some time. (Data source). That trend has a lot to do with both vehicle and roadway safety devices. Those have made the highways safer, so much of this is related to driver behavior.

The rate of decline as a population rate slowed in the 1990s, paralleling widespread adoption of cell phones and the subsequent distracted driving. A clear upward jump occurred in 2020.

It’s hard to distinguish what happened though related to the rates among the number of motor vehicles and miles driven due to the very high rates in the past. Zooming into that data shows the same increases in 2020, and the lowest points for both are higher than the peaks for the prior 10 years.

Earlier this year, I had used this data to look at rates in another way.

The black line is road miles, the light blue is air miles, and the red is MVA deaths per 100,000 population per 100,000 miles. The orange line is simply to make it easy to look at the year 2020 on all three. The drop in air and road miles is expected, but the big jump in mortality is telling.

Some may try to argue that the lockdowns resulted in more speeding on empty roads, but the data does not support this as a cause of MVA deaths since the easing of restrictions.

Now the highways are congested again, but the mortality hasn’t dropped. It’s another argument that COVID is driving up MVAs. It’s not just the mortality rate going up in 2020, but it should have stayed steady or more likely have gone down with less vehicles on the road.

There is also science to support the impacts of COVID on driver safety and behavior. de Paula et al have a study that supports this.

“We observed significant cognitive impairment only in the ROCF, a drawing task test used to assess visuospatial abilities, executive functions and memory. The deficits observed in the ROCF could not be explained by socio-demographic factors, ophthalmologic deficits or psychiatric symptoms, suggesting cognitive deficit secondary to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Other factors which may influence performance, such as motor coordination, spatial neglect, visual attention, semantic knowledge, intelligence and executive functions were not likely to explain the observed difficulties…

…Visuoconstructive deficits are usually defined as an atypical difficulty in using visual and spatial information to GUIDE COMPLEX BEHAVIORS like drawing, assembling objects or organizing multiple pieces of a more sophisticated stimuli…

…the PT must organize visual and spatial information in a planned manner…a processes that demand several more specific cognitive abilities related to PERCEIVING, PROCESSING, STORING, AND RECALLING VISUOSPATIAL INFORMATION, both regarding shape and position.”

“According to several traffic experts I spoke with, the explanation for the 2020 fatality spike is relatively straightforward: With fewer cars on the road during quarantine, traffic congestion was all but eliminated, which emboldened people to drive at lethal speeds…But why has the surge persisted and worsened this year, even as traffic has been picking back up and nearing pre-Covid-19 levels?”

It’s also a problem in other countries as well. However, look how much better the data looks AFTER the US is extracted from it. That’s not surprising given how poorly the US handled the pandemic.

Air travel is significantly safer than road travel, which makes it much harder to tease out data. This should make a pretty good argument that some of what we have been seeing with aircraft incidents stemming from pilot, mechanic, or air traffic controller error could easily be due to the impact of COVID on the brain. I have a number of studies on the neurological impacts of COVID here.

Addendum

Someone sent me a link to a brief study that says it all.

“Findings indicate an association between acute COVID-19 rates and increased car crashes with an OR of 1.5 (1.23-1.26 95%CI)…The OR of car crashes associated with COVID-19 was comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol at legal limits or driving with a seizure disorder…The study suggests that acute COVID-19, regardless of Long COVID status, is linked to an increased risk of car crashes presumably due to neurologic changes caused by SARS-CoV-2.”

I also have found some interesting data on road rage as well as hit and run.

Other stories:

https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/01/30/covid-brain-fog-likely-factor-in-trains-near-miss/