Costs of traffic injuries

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Economics
• Injury Prevention

Background:

• Traffic injuries impose significant socioeconomic burdens.
• Understanding these costs is crucial for effective prevention strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the socioeconomic costs of traffic injuries in Denmark.
• To quantify healthcare and productivity costs using a register-based approach.

Main Methods:

• Utilized national emergency room data and police records to identify traffic injury victims.
• Employed propensity score matching to create a control cohort.
• Assessed healthcare costs via national registers and productivity costs using Cox regression models.

Main Results:

• The first-year socioeconomic cost of a traffic injury was €1406, rising to €8950 over 10 years.
• Severe traffic injuries incurred higher costs, with a first-year cost of €4969 per person.
• Traffic injury victims were found to be younger and socioeconomically disadvantaged compared to the general population.

Conclusions:

• Traffic injury prevention offers substantial societal economic benefits.
• The bottom-up, register-based methodology provides precise cost estimations.
• Injury victims exhibit distinct socioeconomic characteristics compared to the general population.