2008 - IRAP - The True Cost of Road Crashes

In order to evaluate the benefits of programmes of engineering safety countermeasures through economic appraisal, the iRAP methodology needs to include a way of valuing the cost of a life and a serious injury. Experience in high income countries has shown that empirical estimation of values for the prevention of injury requires considerable care in order to avoid bias, and usually costly survey methods. Since such empirical estimation for every country that iRAP works in would be impractical, the purpose of this paper is to explore whether values sufficiently robust for the purposes of iRAP can be derived by consideration of results from existing studies.

This paper:

• Discusses the background to valuation of safety benefits
• Briefly reviews the main methodologies that are in use
• Presents recommendations for values for use in economic appraisal

Valuation of the prevention of a fatality, often termed the value of statistical life, and valuation of serious injury are discussed.