The estimation of the total cost of crashes and the calculation of the benefit of preventing fatal and non-fatal casualties represent a key tool to raise decision-makers and public awareness on the magnitude of the traffic unsafety problem and to mobilise resources for investments in traffic safety improvements. However, in many countries there is not an agreed set of values that can be used at national level. The most frequent final result is that the cost of crashes is remarkably underestimated, which in turn represents a serious barrier to justify expenditure in traffic safety. This paper presents the work undertaken in Spain by FITSA Foundation (Fundacion Instituto Tecnologico para la Seguridad del Automovil), in cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), since 2003 with the objective of quantifying total crash costs at national level and individual fatal and non-fatal casualties costs. The economic values and the methodology to calculate them are presented and discussed, with emphasis on their applicability and limitations. An international comparison between the Spanish casualty costs and those of the USA, UK, the Netherlands and Sweden has been conducted. The main conclusions has been the important underestimation of casualty costs in Spain with respect to the rest of the countries. The main reasons for the underestimation of the costs in Spain are explained. The international analysis takes into account differences in per capita GDP and other factors in order to allow for direct comparison. Since the comparison has shown than most of the differences originate in the underestimation of the human costs, FITSA-UPM has designed, based on international previous experiences, a questionnaire to estimate the willingness to pay for avoiding traffic accident risks of Spanish citizens. The main aspects of the questionnaire are dissected in the paper. A simple progressive dissemination strategy is also proposed in order to raise awareness of the costs of crashes among politicians, decision makers and the general public. The final objective of this strategy is to attain an agreement with key national actors on a set of values to be used in economical appraisals of road safety interventions. A cost-effectiveness simple example (tire pressure monitoring system) is presented in the paper to illustrate the need and the usefulness of developing traffic casualty cost estimations. The paper tries to explain the difficulties encountered in Spain to calculate the accident cost values and to raise interest among potential users of those values (in particular public administrations). The paper aims at providing incentives and presenting lessons to other developing countries that might be facing the same obstacles in this area. (Author/publisher) This publication may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.ictct.org/workshop.php?workshop_nr=25
Abstract