How would you test this

[noetsi]

I had a problem the other day where we were asked to estimate the reduction to damage to the road and safety violations from increasing the number of inspectors? I could not think of any good methodology to do this. The best I could come up with would be to find a state similar to Florida with significantly more inspectors, which is very unlikely to exist. Or maybe look at Florida at different points of time with more or less inspectors (again I doubt this data exists)?

How could you solve an issue like this?

 

[hlsmith]

Not following what this is, "reduction to damage to the road and safety violations from increasing the number of inspectors?"

Law enforcement agents or people that go out and inspect bridges?

 

[Buckeye]

What does an inspector do? How is damage to the road measured? My naive thought is that we would only know a road is damaged if it is inspected. If we have more inspectors then more sections of the road can be evaluated for damage. So, the amount damage recorded is positively correlated to number of inspectors and reduction to damage is relative to how much damage was inspected? haha

 

[noetsi]

They inspect trucks to be sure they are not the type to have accidents or damage roads.

I think the federal government inspects to see if the road is damaged although I am not sure. The inspectors inspect the trucks themselves. The inspections of trucks and roads are not the same. So that is an issue.

 

[hlsmith]

Are these like the weighing stations?

 

[noetsi]

I don't think the weighing stations are open. They use inspectors. But this is really a methods question, what method would you use to address this question