The valuation of direct and indirect accident costs for the national economy is carried out for several reasons. A major aim is to present the total costs due to road accidents. Furthermore, the results of an accident cost accounting offers the possibility to compare expenditures for safety in transport with its benefits to prevent accidents. As a result, priorities can be deducted to guarantee the most efficient way to assign expenditures of the transport safety budget. The results of the accident cost accounting are a major input for both the calculation of the external costs in transport and for the infrastructure cost accounting and in particular as regards pricing consideration in the transport sector. Due to the Austrian law for federal roads (§ 5 para. 8) the Austrian Ministry for Transport Innovation and Technology is obliged to calculate the average costs caused by a road accident on federal roads with fatalities or severe injuries. These calculations have to be published for the first time in 2012. To do so it is necessary to conduct a road accident calculation. The last calculation for Austria has been published in 2008 (UKR2007) and presents the total road accident costs and the average accident costs per fatality and injured person for the year 2004 und 2006. The accidents on Austrian roads are the basis for the calculation of the accidents costs. The actualisation of the accident cost calculation is based on these accident data and on the accident cost calculation published in 2008 (UKR2007). It calculates comparable values for 2011 and considers and integrates developments regarding the calculation method on the European level. The detailed calculations for the UKR2007 enable the use of comprehensive basis material for the new calculations for 2011. The state of the art analysis has shown that new road accident costs calculations have been done for some countries since 2007. But the method did rather not change. This is also true for the estimation of the values of a statistical life based on the willingness to pay approach. This allows to calculate the accident costs with the same method as used for the UKR2007. Therefore the following cost categories have been used (the same as for the UKR2007): * Person damages - costs for medical treatment, - production losses (for the year of the accident and consecutive years), - value for human suffering concerning traffic safety (less non-realized consumption) * Material damages, * General costs - administration costs of the insurance sector - police - costs for ambulance - fire department - costs for the legal system and the prevention of damage - time losses due to traffic congestion - other liability insurance costs The methodological background of the UKR2007 as been used for the calculation of costs of these cost categories. All necessary input data has been investigated completely new. For almost all data it has been possible to gather actual values for 2011 or at least values for 2010. For a few parts of the necessary data it has not been possible to get actual values. In these cases the values from the UKR2007 have been taken and updated by the help of proper factors based on the development of relevant indices from 2004 to 2011. The following table presents the road accident cost in Austria in total and for each cost category. To enable a comparison with 1993 the values for 1993 are also presented and a sub sum (without human suffering) is given for those values that have been calculated in the same way for the years 1993, 2004 and 2011. (Author/publisher)
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