Estimating the Costs of Unintentional Injuries

The National Safety Council makes estimates of the average costs of fatal and nonfatal unintentional injuries to illustrate their impact on the nation's economy. The costs are a measure of the dollars spent and income not received due to accidents, injuries, and fatalities. It is another way to measure the importance of prevention work.

Costs of Motor Vehicle Injuries

The calculable costs of motor-vehicle crashes are wage and productivity losses, medical expenses, administrative expenses, motor vehicle damage, and employers’ uninsured costs. (See the definitions for a description of what is included in each component.) The costs of all these items for each death (not each fatal crash), injury (not each injury crash), and property damage crash were:

To estimate the costs of motor-vehicle crashes that occur while on the job, see Costs of Other Injuries below.

Expressed on a per death basis, the cost of all motor vehicle crashes—i.e. fatal, nonfatal injury, and property damage—was $5,800,000. This includes the cost of one death, 54 nonfatal disabling injuries, and 197 property damage crashes (including minor injuries). This average may be used to estimate the motor vehicle crash costs for a state provided that there are at least 10 deaths and only one or two occurred in each fatal crash. If fewer than 10 deaths, estimate the costs of deaths, nonfatal disabling injuries, and property damage crashes separately.

Motor vehicle injuries by severity. Estimates are given here of the costs by severity of injuries, as defined in sections 2.3.4 through 2.3.6 of the Manual on Classification of Motor Vehicle Traffic Accidents (7th Edition) ANSI Standard D16.1-2007. These injury severity designations are sometimes referred to as class "A," "B," and "C."

These estimates may be helpful for cities and states that do not use the concept of "disabling injury" (see definitions). Estimates used for deaths or property damage crashes are not changed by using these estimates.

Cost-benefit analysis. The figures above are appropriate for measuring the economic loss to a community resulting from past motor-vehicle crashes. They should not be used, however, in computing the dollar value of future benefits due to traffic safety measures because they do not include the value of a person's natural desire to live longer or to protect the quality of one's life. That is, the economic loss estimates do not include what people are willing to pay for improved safety. Work has been done to create the necessary theoretical groundwork and empirical valuation of injury costs under the "willingness to pay" or comprehensive cost concept. Estimates in the following section are based on the comprehensive cost concept and should be used for cost-benefit analyses wherever feasible.

Comprehensive costs of motor-vehicle crashes. In addition to the economic cost components listed above, the following comprehensive costs also include a measure of the value of lost quality of life which was obtained through empirical studies of what people actually pay to reduce their safety and health risks. The average comprehensive costs on a per injured person basis were:

Since the lost quality of life figures, which are included in the above comprehensive costs calculations, do not represent real income not received nor expenses incurred, they should not be used to determine the pure economic impact of past crashes.