Accident costs are estimated annually by the Department of Transport (DTp) and published in Highways Economics Note 1. The DTp reviewed the methods by which accident costs were calculated and in 1988 the costs of road accident fatalities were re-valued using the principle of "willingness to pay for risk reduction". The DTp now intends to revise the valuation of the costs of non-fatal road accident casualties using similar underlying principles, and with the TRRL, a programme of research is being undertaken. This research programme covers three areas of work. This paper summarises the results of research which is being carried out to estimate how the national data on serious casualties reported to the police might be divided into four or five severity groups. The estimates are derived from linking data on casualties treated at hospitals with police accident data. Two data sets were used: STATS19 data and data from the Scottish HospitalIn Patient Study (SHIPS).
Samenvatting