Road crashes result in all kinds of social costs, such as medical costs, production loss, human losses, property damage, settlement costs and costs due to congestion. Studies into road crash costs and their trends are carried out quite regularly. In 2009, the costs amounted to € 12.5 billion, or 2.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Insight into these costs is used for policy preparation and evaluation, and makes it possible to compare them with costs in other areas. Another important application is the use in cost-benefit analyses which use the costs per crash or casualty saved to assess road safety investments.
Summary
Road crashes result in all kinds of social costs, such as medical costs, production loss, human losses, property damage, settlement costs and costs due to congestion. Studies into road crash costs and their trends are carried out quite regularly. In 2009, the costs amounted to € 12.5 billion, or 2.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Insight into these costs is used for policy preparation and evaluation, and makes it possible to compare them with costs in other areas. Another important application is the use in cost-benefit analyses which use the costs per crash or casualty saved to assess road safety investments.
Background and content
In 2009, there were 720 fatalities in the Netherlands, and 18,580 serious road injuries. In addition, each year many more crashes result in less severe injury or in property damage only (PDO). This leads to all sorts of social costs, such as medical costs and production loss. Improving road safety has priority in mobility policy, not in the least because of these social costs (VenW, 2008). Both in the Netherlands and in other countries research is regularly carried out into the size of these crash costs as well as into cost trends. The first study in the Netherlands was done in 1985 (McKinsey, 1985). Commissioned by the Transport Research Centre (AVV) in the Netherlands, SWOV carried out the first update of this study in 1995, in which various aspects of the method were improved (Muizelaar et al., 1995). Since then, SWOV and the Centre for Transport and Navigation (WVL, previously called DVS and AVV) periodically study the costs of crashes in the Netherlands. Over the years the method has been improved further, for example, by including human losses and congestion due to crashes. Similar developments also took place in other countries. This fact sheet discusses the different types of costs due to road crashes and the ways to calculate these costs. In addition, the most recently calculated costs of crashes in the Netherlands are presented and placed in (international) perspective.
What is the purpose of research into the costs of road crashes?
Information about the size and development of road crash costs is important to policy and research for two reasons. Firstly, this information is regularly used to prepare and assess the national road safety policy, like the realization of the Mobility Policy Document (VenW & VROM, 2004). The information is also useful for comparing costs of road crashes with costs in other policy areas. These can be other sectors within traffic and transport or sectors in other areas, for example environmental policy, public health or other sectors concerned with safety policy. Information about the social costs provides insight into the possibilities for cost reduction and can be used for setting policy priorities. International comparisons of road crash costs are also made.
Secondly, information about the costs of road crashes is used in cost-benefit analyses (see SWOV Fact sheet Cost-benefit analysis of road safety measures). These analyses use the costs per crash or per casualty to express the road safety policy effects in terms of money. For example, the guideline Overview Effects Infrastructure (OEI), a guideline often used for cost-benefits analyses in the Netherlands, uses core road crash cost data (Eijgenraam et al., 2000). Research into the costs of road safety is also carried out to determine prices for mobility. Estimates of traffic costs are used to determine the extent to which current pricing policy is efficient and which improvements are possible. CE Research and consultancy (CE, 2004) and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT, 1998) investigated this subject. Their studies also examined other traffic costs than those of crashes, more particularly costs of infrastructure, environment and congestion.