Road crashes impose large human and financial costs on society and substantial investments are made in infrastructure and safety programs to reduce road trauma. The cost of road crashes is important to the safety debate in Australia, and the unit values particularly for a fatality, injury or cost of a fatal crash are key inputs into policy development and cost-benefit analysis for safety programs and infrastructure projects. The social cost of road crashes in 2006 was an estimated $17.85 billion (1.7 per cent of GDP). This was a real decrease of 7.5 per cent compared to 1996 (2006 dollars). Estimated human losses were approximately $2.4 million per fatality, losses for a hospitalised injury were approximately $214 000 per injury (including disability-related costs), and losses for non-hospitalised injury were approximately $2200 per injury. These new estimates of the cost of road crashes update previous estimates for 1996 (Bureau of Transport Economics (BTE) Road crash costs in Australia, Report 102).

• Cost of road crashes in Australia 2006
  

  report 118 [PDF: 4.23 MB]