Road trauma is usually measured in terms of fatalities, casualties and social cost. Injuries are classified into fatal, serious and minor injuries as reported by police. The social cost of road crashes and injuries is a measure of the total cost of road crashes to the nation. It includes loss of life and life quality, loss of productivity, medical, legal and court and property damage costs. To support the New Zealand Transport Strategy in the area of road safety, it is essential that road safety resources are utilised efficiently. It is therefore desirable that each safety intervention is evaluated, wherever possible, in terms of social cost to enable evaluation of the intervention cost against the resulting benefit (i.e. reduction in social cost of road crashes and injuries). When there are different solutions or options to a transport problem, social cost information also facilitates consistent comparison between solutions or options, especially when these solutions have different impacts on injury and crash risks. Inflation has caused a steady increase in the average social cost associated with road crashes. The Ministry of Transport publishes The Social Cost of Road Crashes and Injuries every year to provide estimates of the social costs of road crashes and injuries in current prices. This report provides estimates of the total social cost of road crashes and injuries that occurred in New Zealand in 2005. It also reports the average social cost per injury and crash, with and without adjustment for the level of non-reporting. The analysis is based on crash and injury data from 2003 to 2005. Unless otherwise indicated, all social cost estimates are expressed at June 2006 prices. This paper is organised as follows: Section 2 gives a brief explanation of the methodologies used for estimating the total numbers of injuries and crashes and the average social cost per injury and crash; Section 3 provides some guidance on the application of the average social cost estimates; and Section 4 provides estimates of average social cost per injury and crash. A detailed discussion of the methodology is given in Appendix A. Appendix B provides estimates of the total number of crashes and injuries and the price indices used in the update. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting