Alabama’s citizens are being pushed, but not ordered to stay at home like 30 other states, or roughly 80% of the country’s population.

Gov. Kay Ivey sent out social distancing pleas in a video distributed across Alabama. She’s written to her 48,000 Twitter followers about the threat of coronavirus and the need to curb regular behaviors. Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed has made similar warnings, and the city instituted a nightly curfew.

As White House experts project the global pandemic could kill potentially 240,000 nationwide, we are traveling less but still consistently going out based on traffic figures at Montgomery’s intersections.

Traffic has dropped as little as 25% at four interchanges Monday after Ivey shut down non-essential businesses and Reed announced the curfew. The rate of traffic was slower but steadier per hour, according to city traffic engineering data.

For example, vehicles passing through the interchange at Vaughn and Taylor roads in east Montgomery — a heavy retail area with grocery stores nearby — had 10,308 fewer vehicles Monday, a 33% change from March 9, the last Monday before the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the state.

Consider data collected from March 9 compared to March 30:

Vaughn Road-Taylor Road: 31,744 vehicles reduced to 21,436 or 33% fewer

Troy Highway-Taylor Road: 27,661 vehicles reduced to 19,565 or 30% fewer

East Boulevard-Vaughn Road: 69,010 vehicles reduced to 48,924 or 29% fewer

East South Boulevard-Woodley Road: 50,408 vehicles to 37,998 or 25% fewer

Rush hour has all but disappeared as more and more workers are under work-from-home orders. The heavy morning traffic and 5 p.m. return home aren’t there, accounting for some of the dropoff. Instead daily traffic patterns mirror pre-pandemic weekend behavior when a traveler’s day is filled with small trips for a to-do list with a stop here for this and a visit there to do that.

The city did not have access to traffic data for downtown available because the measurement equipment is not set up there.

Alabama Department of Transportation figures show interstate traffic has dropped 25-30% comparing Thursday, March 21, 2019, to Thursday, March 19 this year. Comparatively, Seattle had a 65% dropoff in highway traffic as the city was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March and stay at home orders were put in place, according to a USA Today report. San Francisco vehicular traffic dropped off 58 percent.

More:Highway traffic is plunging in these US cities amid coronavirus pandemic

Commercial traffic hasn’t curbed much during the pandemic as more goods are being delivered to businesses and homes, city Director of Traffic Engineering Wesley Cox said.

Health officials are worried about Alabama hospital systems’ capacity to treat the virus and stressed Alabamians, regardless of a state mandate, to stay away from each other. Each trip to a drive-through for a snack or Coke or a stop at an ATM for cash is a potential viral contact point. Asymptomatic people can still transmit the virus without knowing it, experts say.

The state now has more than 1,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, an exponential rise, and 24 deaths related to COVID-19. It is confirmed in all but eight of Alabama’s 67 counties.

Sara MacNeil can be reached at smacneil@montgome.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter.