Crash costs in the United States by crash geometry

This study was conducted to estimate the costs per crash for three police-coded crash severity groupings within 16 selected crash geometry types and within two speed limit categories (or=50 mph).

We merged previously developed costs per victim by abbreviated injury scale (AIS) score into U.S. crash data files that scored injuries in both the AIS and police-coded severity scales to estimate injury costs, then aggregated the estimates into costs per crash by maximum injury severity.

The most costly crashes were non-intersection fatal/disabling injury crashes on a road with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour or higher where multiple vehicles crashed head-on or a single vehicle struck a human (over 1.69 US dollars and 1.16 million US dollars per crash, respectively). The annual cost of police-reported run-off-road collisions, which include both rollovers and object impacts, represented 34% of total costs.

This paper provides cost estimates useful for evaluating roadway countermeasures and for designing vehicles to minimize crash harm. It gives unit costs of crashes by type in the coding system used by the police. The costs are in an appropriate form for economic analysis of countermeasures addressing locally defined problems identified by analyzing police crash reports.