Types of costs and calculation
Which types of costs are there and how can they be measured?
Road safety costs in the
The cost categories are:
- Medical costs
- Production loss
- Human costs
- Material costs
- Settlement costs
- Costs of traffic jams caused by crashes
Medical costs
Medical costs are the costs resulting from treating casualties; the costs, for example, of hospital, rehabilitation, medicines, and adaptations for the handicapped.
Various databases are used to calculate these costs, including the Statistics Netherlands data and the National Medical Registration (LMR) data. The data used includes, among others, the average number of days a casualty spends in hospital, the average nursing costs per day in hospital or nursing home, and the number of ambulance journeys per year.
In 2003 the road crash medical costs totalled approximately €230 million.
Production loss
The costs from production loss result from the injured being temporarily or permanently being unable to work and the entire production loss of the fatalities.
The calculations use the possible loss of production, i.e. the contribution (expressed in money) that someone could have made if he had not been injured or killed prematurely. It is irrelevant here if the casualties had actually worked before the crash, or would have worked in the future.
In 2003 the costs of production loss due to road crashes amounted to approximately €1.3 billion.
Human costs
Human costs, also called human losses, refer to the loss of quality of life for casualties and their relatives and friends. These are costs in terms of suffering, pain, sorrow, and loss of the joy of living.
To determine the human costs, a survey is held in the
Little is known about the human costs of non-fatal injury. A British study has resulted in an estimate of the human costs of an in-patient being 10% of those of a fatality.
In 2003 the human costs as a result of road crashes amounted to €5.5 billion.
For more details: Fact sheet The valuation of human costs of road deaths (pdf)
Material costs
Material costs consist of the damage to vehicles, freights, roads, and fixed roadside objects.
The estimation of material costs is based on insurance data such as awarded damage claims, and on estimates of unclaimed damage and the own risk excess of those insured.
In 2003 the road crash material costs came to €3.9 billion.
Settlement costs
Settlement costs refer to the damage incurred by organizations such as fire brigade, police, the judiciary, and insurance companies.
These settlement costs are estimates based on, among others, Statistics Netherlands data and insurance data.
In 2003 the road crash settlement costs amounted to €1.3 billion.
Costs of traffic jams caused by crashes
Traffic jam costs are the result of lost time due to traffic jams that occur after a crash.
Research data is used to determine the total traffic jam costs and the share of lost time due to crashes. This share is about 13%
In 2003 the road crash traffic jam costs came to €125 million.