In 2010, 193 people were killed and 279 people were critically injured on Western Australian roads (WA Police, 2010). In addition, annually almost 3,000 casualties are admitted to hospital and a much larger number of crashes result in less severe injury or property damage only. These road crashes impose a significant health and social burden, with the real costs to individuals, families and the community likely to far exceed the estimated annual costs of approximately $2 billion (Thompson and Hill, 2010). This report presents an overview of the approaches used to cost road trauma, in particular focusing on the nature and extent of the longer term consequences and issues to consider in formulating recommendations to undertake future work in this area. The following questions were addressed: 1. What methods have been adopted in studies measuring the costs of road trauma in Australia and elsewhere? 2. How have the longer term consequences of road trauma been incorporated in previous studies? 3. What databases are available in Western Australia with information to incorporate in future work documenting the longer term consequences of road trauma? 4. What issues need to be considered in formulating recommendations for future work on the cost of road trauma and its longer term consequences? The underlying purpose of undertaking this research was to summarise the status of current knowledge about the social and economic dimensions of road trauma and to provide insight into how to improve our understanding of its costs and longer term consequences in Western Australia. Following preparation of an interim report and discussions with the Project Advisory Group, recommendations have been proposed for future work in this area. The study consisted of four stages. The first stage was to review the literature on the costs of road trauma. This was followed in the second stage by an assessment of available data sources with information to use in measuring the longer term consequences of road trauma. The third stage of the project drew on the results of the previous stages and raised issues to consider in making recommendations for future work. Following discussions with the Project Advisory Group, the final stage of the study involved formulating recommendations about the directions for future research. In reviewing the literature, the goal was not to undertake a systematic review of all the literature on the costs of road trauma. Rather, the intention was to conduct a comprehensive review to illustrate the scope of available literature and to identify issues and debates regarding methods for costing road trauma, in particular in regard to its longer term costs and consequences. The search framework entailed using relevant search terms to identify articles in the following databases: PubMed, ProQuest and Current Contents. The reference lists of these publications were searched to identify any additional publications, and the websites of government organisations were also accessed to obtain relevant material. Search terms included keywords such as ‘road crash’, ‘road injury’ and ‘road trauma’ in combination with ‘costs’, ‘burden’ and ‘consequences’. To identify available databases that could be used to document the longer term consequences of road trauma, a ‘snowballing’ process was used in which a range of known stakeholders in road safety and disability services were asked to help identify other relevant stakeholders who might have access to relevant data, and in turn these stakeholders were asked the same question (See Appendix 1 for the list of stakeholders and respective agencies). The remainder of the report is organised as follows. The next section presents the results of the review of the literature including an overview of Australian studies of the cost of road trauma, a description of key components in costing road trauma and measurement techniques, a discussion of issues in determining the longer term consequences of road trauma, and an international comparison of approaches to measure the costs of road trauma and its longer term consequences. Section 4 outlines potential data sources that could be accessed to provide data to document the longer term costs and consequences of road trauma. The final section provides a summary of key findings and raises issues that were considered by the Project Advisory Group prior to the formulation of recommendations for future work to measure the costs of road trauma and its longer term consequences. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting