Winter Weather Advisories and Vehicle Crashes in the US

This dataset supports a study on the impact of forecast lead times on vehicle crashes during winter weather in the US. It combines data on winter weather advisories, vehicle crashes, snowplow operations in Iowa, and mobile phone location data to analyze behavioral and institutional responses.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between winter weather advisory lead times and vehicle crash counts to assess forecast value.
• Correlate snowplow ping data from Iowa with advisory issuance times to study institutional preparedness.
• Use mobile phone location data to measure changes in individual travel patterns following earlier weather advisories.
• Replicate the study's econometric analysis on how forecast accuracy and lead time interact to influence crash outcomes.

Strengths

• Data is structured to replicate a peer-reviewed study on forecast economics and public safety.
• Integrates multiple data sources: weather advisories, crash reports, snowplow telemetry, and human mobility data.
• Focuses on a specific, high-impact scenario of winter weather vehicle crashes.

Limitations

• The specific row count, column structure, and file formats are not provided in the input.
• Snowplow data is limited to the state of Iowa, which may not be nationally representative.
• Temporal coverage and exact geographic scope for crash and advisory data are unspecified.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse, authored by Vaibhav Anand.

Collection Method

Combines administrative records (crashes, advisories), telemetry (snowplow pings), and commercial mobile location data.

Freshness

Dataset was last updated on 2026-02-23.

Geography

United States, with snowplow data specific to Iowa.