The purpose of this study was to try to provide up-to-date external cost estimates of road-traffic accidents in Sweden. The study uses two different concepts of externalities. Firstly, there is the risk that the driver kills/injures another person on the road i.e. a pedestrian, a cyclist or another person in another vehicle. Secondly, there is the risk that the driver and/or his passenger are killed/injured. In this latter case, society at large will lose the contribution to current and future output (net of his consumption in the case of a fatality and net of his change of consumption in the case of injury) which the driver and his passenger would have provided had they not been killed/injured. Using these two concepts of externalities, the principal finding is that previously reported estimates of such costs appear to underestimate the external costs that can be linked to the heavier motor-vehicles (lorries), but overestimate the costs that can be linked to lighter motor-vehicles (passenger cars). (Author/publisher)
Abstract