Funding opportunities for 'Changing into a higher gear towards road safety improvement’ : Inventory of cost bearers and beneficiaries in road safety. In the project ‘Changing into a higher gear towards road safety improvement’ SWOV has investigated the feasibility of taking additional road safety measures, in order to reach the target for serious road injuries in particular. These measures concern the fields of infrastructure, intelligent vehicle systems (ITS), enforcement, helmets and protective clothing, public lighting, visibility of cyclists, speed limits and mobility measures. This report gives an overview of the possibilities to finance the additional measures. To this end, it was examined whether and how the parties who benefit from additional investment in road safety can be involved in financing. The first questions that had to be answered are: 1. Which parties bear the costs of road crashes? 2. Which parties will benefit from the implementation of road safety measures? In the first place, the beneficiaries of extra investments are the parties who bear the costs of road crashes and who therefore benefit from a reduction in crashes. This report has examined how the social costs of road crashes (12.5 billion euros in 2009) are divided among different parties: - It turns out that by far the largest part of the costs, approximately 10 billion euros, is borne by private individuals. These include casualties and next of kin who have to deal with human losses and vehicle damage and other road users who pay for damage to vehicles, handling costs of insurance companies and personal injury through insurance premiums. - The cost for companies is at least 1.4 billion euros, consisting of vehicle damage, loss of personnel, insurance premiums and congestion costs. Costs for insurers themselves are not included, as their costs are covered by income from insurance premiums and are therefore eventually borne by road users. - Governments bear a small part of the cost, about 300 million euros. These include cost of emergency services, legal handling and care tasks. Based on the available data, some of the costs could not be attributed to any party. This is especially the case for the costs as a result of production loss and loss of income; these costs are borne by private individuals (employees) and by employers. Secondly, there are parties that directly benefit from implementation of the measures. An overview has been made of the beneficiaries for each of the measures. The national government is an important beneficiary due to substantial extra income from a possible intensifying of enforcement, as is the civil engineering sector because of involvement in several measures as a contractor of the implementation. Other beneficiaries are the vehicle sector and the manufacturers and suppliers of navigation systems, enforcement equipment, helmets and protective clothing, light poles and bicycle lights. Finally, private individuals may experience benefits other than the crash costs saved, e.g. reduction of travel time and fewer fines. The shown overviews show what opportunities there are to involve the beneficiaries in the funding of the measures. It should be taken into account that investments in road safety do not usually come about as a result of free market processes due to, in economic terms, ‘market failure’. Funding is therefore only promising if a financing construction (partly) removes or bypasses these barriers. This means, among other things, that governments have a role to play. In addition, the government is an important beneficiary: intensifying enforcement can yield substantial resources that can be used for financing the road safety measures. Also road pricing, preferably differentiated according to safety characteristics of road users or vehicles, can provide funding opportunities. Road safety investments by private individuals can be encouraged by a higher penetration rate of ITS and by increased use of protective clothing, helmets, and bicycle lights. Public information, fiscal measures such as abolishing VAT on the products mentioned, differentiation of insurance premiums, legislation and/or enforcement (depending on the road safety measure) can be used for encouragement. In addition to the government the vehicle industry and other companies can play a role, since they directly benefit from increased use of their products. For example, they can (in the shorter term) install safety facilities as a standard in more types of vehicles and/or participate in public information. Furthermore, crowd funding (also used for other public investments) and sponsorship of road safety projects by companies may make additional resources available. Finally, the various parties who benefit from road safety can make agreements on dividing the costs of road safety measures, and put down these agreements in, for example, a covenant entitled ‘Financing target 2020’.
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