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Investing in a sustainably safe road traffic system

This report (R-98-58) builds on research reported earlier, on the cost of traffic unsafety, and the thus resulting social cost-effectiveness of investments into a sustainably safe road traffic system. This is recapitulated in the first chapters. Also this is placed into an international perspective.

Next is concluded that the developments in recent years with respect to prices (relating to the cost of traffic unsafety and to investments), the amount of traffic, and the traffic risks are not so large that the earlier calculations now would lead to other conclusions.

The fact that these social cost-effective investments are not made spontaneously, points to economical market failures. A broad economic analysis gives the following potential causes of this:

Finally some possible directions for solutions are given. This particularly concerns the obtaining and dissemination of knowledge, the use of levies or taxes to internalise the external costs and to induce safe behaviour, and the introduction of conditional grants to road authorities to achieve investments directed at traffic safety.

SWOV Research Activities 11 - March 1999

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