Violations of road traffic law contribute to increasing the number of road accidents in all countries. An estimate for Norway (Elvik 1997A) indicates that if 16 of the most frequent traffic law violations were eliminated, the number of road accident fatalities could be reduced by 48%. The number of road accident casualties could be reduced by 27%, according to this study. Similar estimates for Sweden (Elvik and Amundsen 2000) indicate that violations of road traffic law is an even greater problem in that country. It has been estimated that by eliminating traffic violations, the number of road accident fatalities in Sweden could be reduced by 63% and the number of road accident casualties by 37%. There is little doubt that safety improvements of a similar magnitude could be attained in most motorised countries if road users complied with the rules of the road. Evans (1991), for example, has estimated that the number of traffic fatalities in the United States could be reduced by about 40% if driving with an illegal blood alcohol content was eliminated. One of the most effective ways of making road users comply with road traffic law, is to increase police enforcement. There is little doubt that increasing enforcement, or making it more effective, could contribute substantially to reducing the number of road accidents in many countries. It is, however, not obvious that a massive increase of police enforcement, designed to eliminate violations, would be optimal from society’s point of view. Increasing traffic police enforcement would likely bring benefits in terms of fewer accidents. But the resources allocated to traffic police enforcement could alternatively be used for other road safety measures. Beyond a certain point, it is likely that the additional benefits of further increases in enforcement become too small compared to the benefits that other road safety measures would give. It is by no means certain that an optimal amount of enforcement in this sense will be sufficient to ensure perfect compliance with the law. The very idea that it can be regarded as optimal to tolerate a certain amount of violations may strike many people as strange and indefensible. Surely, it may be argued, once a law has been passed, people are morally obliged to comply with it. If they do not, it is the duty of the police to enforce the law as effectively as they can. But law enforcement agencies have many duties. The resources they have at their disposal may be insufficient to carry out all these duties in an ideal fashion. Hence, priorities must be set and ideal solutions may be unattainable. One way of setting priorities for police enforcement is to conduct cost-benefit analyses of alternative levels and forms of enforcement. The purpose of this report is to present a framework for cost-benefit analysis of traffic police enforcement and give some examples of such analyses. The main research problems that are discussed in this report can be stated as follows: 1. What are the basic principles of cost-benefit analysis? Is the application of these principles to cost-benefit analyses of traffic police enforcement straightforward, or does it involve problems that may lead us to reconsider these principles? 2. Are the effects of various types of traffic police enforcement sufficiently well known to determine the optimal amount of enforcement by means of cost-benefit analyses? 3. Do the benefits of increased police enforcement exceed the costs, or are current cost-benefit analyses unable to give credible answers to this question? In this report, each of these problems will be elaborated. (Author/publisher) For an overview off all working papers and deliverables of the ESCAPE project, see http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/proj6/escape/deliver.htm
Abstract