In 1995, SWOV calculated road safety costs for 1997 (See ITRD 882425). Since then, new data from the Transport Research Centre (AVV) of the Ministry of Transport have become available. Furthermore, new methods for calculating costs have been developed. As a result of all this, this report has updated and supplemented the data for 1997. In addition, a number of the 1993 figures have been recalculated using new methods. The total material and immaterial road safety costs for 1993 and 1997 are presented. This study also contains the costs per individual victim and accident. To do this, the actual numbers of victims and accidents were used (not those numbers registered by the police). Using these costs per victim and/or accident, it is possible to carry out a cost-benefit analysis. The benefits of measures should then be expressed in terms of the actual numbers of victims and/or accidents prevented by them. The study also takes into account the so-called 1-million-Euro-test proposed by the European Commission (EC). According to this rough rule-of-thumb, every measure that costs less than 1 million Euro's (2.2 million guilders) per prevented road death, is considered to be economically justified. The measure should, therefore, be introduced. This sum of money also takes the other damage (those injured and material damage) into account. The Dutch equivalent of the 1-million-Euro-test used the 1997 data, and it resulted in 9 million guilders per prevented road death. If the tailback costs and immaterial damage are also included - the EC has not taken these into account - it results in 14 million guilders. A number of possible explanations are given for the difference between the European and the Dutch sums.
Samenvatting