SafetyCube: Road crash costs and cost-benefit analysis in Europe 

In the Europen poject SafetyCube a Decision Support System (DSS) has been developed. One of the aims of the DSS is to assist road safety policy makers and other stakeholders to select cost-effective measures. W2Economics, in cooperation with SWOV and other SafetyCube partners, made a detailed analysis of the socio-economic costs of road crashes in more than 30 European countries. The costs appear to vary widely: from 0.4 to 4.1% of GDP. The differences are mainly explained by differences in the valuation methods. For that reason, also 'harmonized' cost estimates were made for each country, which are all based on similar methodologies. Using these estimates, total costs of road crashes are estimated at 500 billion Euro, which is equivalent to at least 3% of GDP.

In addition, we contributed to developing a cost-benefit calculation tool for road safety measures. The analysis of road crash costs is a main input for this tool.

Final results of the crash cost analysis were presented at the SafetyCube Conference in a presentation and a poster. Results were also presented at TRB 2017, IRTAD Conference 2017, Eurosafe Conference 2017 en TRA 2018.

Client: European Commission, 2016-2018. In cooperation with SWOV and several European partners.