The

Economic

Impact

of

Motor Vehicle

Crashes

2000

The

Economic

Impact

of

Motor Vehicle

Crashes

2000
Technical Report Documentation Page 

1. Report No. DOT HS 809 446 2. Government Accession No. 3. Recipient's Catalog No. 

5. Report Date 

May, 2002 

4. Title and Subtitle 

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes, 2000 

6. Performing Organization Code 

7. Author(s) 

L. Blincoe, A. Seay, E. Zaloshnja, T..Miller, E. Romano, S.Luchter, R.Spicer 

8. Performing Organization Report No. 

9. Performing Organization Name and Address 10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS) 

Plans and Policy 

National Highway Traffic safety Administration 

Washington, D.C. 20590 

11. Contract or Grant No. 

13. Type of Report and Period Covered 

NHTSA Technical Report 

12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address 

U.S. Department of Transportation 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 

Washington, D.C. 20590

14. Sponsoring Agency Code 

15. Supplementary Notes 

16. Abstract 

This report presents the results of an analysis of motor vehicle crash costs in the United States in the year 2000. The total 

economic cost of motor vehicle crashes in 2000 was $230.6 billion. This represents the present value of lifetime costs for 

41, 821 fatalities, 5.3 million non-fatal injuries, and 28 million damaged vehicles, in both police-reported and unreported 

crashes. Lost market productivity accounted for $61 billion of this total, while property damage accounted for nearly as much - 

$59 billion. Medical expenses totaled $32.6 billion and travel delay accounted for $25.6 billion. Each fatality resulted in an 

average discounted lifetime cost of $977,000. Public revenues paid for roughly 9 percent of all motor vehicle crash costs, 

costing tax payers $21 billion in 2000, the equivalent of over $200 in added taxes for every household in the U.S. Alcoholinvolved crashes accounted for $51.1 billion or 22 percent of all economic costs, and 75 percent of these costs occurred in 

crashes where a driver or non-occupant had a BAC of .10 or greater. In roughly 80 percent of these cases, alcohol was the 

cause of the crash. Crashes in which police indicate that at least one driver was exceeding the legal speed limit or driving too 

fast for conditions cost $40.4 billion in 2000. Safety belt use prevented 11,900 fatalities, 325,000 serious injuries, and $50

billion in injury related costs in 2000, but the failure of a substantial portion of the driving population to buckle up caused

9,200 unnecessary fatalities, 143,000 serious injuries, and cost society $26 billion in easily preventable injury related costs. 

17. Key Words 

economic - costs - motor vehicle - crashes – alcohol – 

speed – safety belts – seat belts - source of payment – 

accidents – highway – safety – fatalities – injuries – 

functional capacity – fci - highways - roads 

18. Distribution Statement 

This document is available to the public from the National 

Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161 

http//:www.ntis.gov

19. Security Classif. (of this report) 

None

20. Security Classif. (of this page) 

None

21. No. of Pages 22. Price 

Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) Reproduction of completed page authorized

The

Economic

Impact

of

Motor Vehicle

Crashes

2000

Lawrence J. Blincoe

Angela G. Seay, M.Sc.

Eduard Zaloshnja, Ph.D.

Ted R. Miller, Ph.D.

Eduardo O. Romano, Ph.D.

Stephen Luchter

Rebecca S. Spicer, Ph.D.

May 2002

Table of Contents

Summary ................................................................................................................................................ 1

Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Human Capital Costs ..................................................................................................................... 13

Modifications to Previous Studies:

Market Productivity ............................................................................................................................14

Household Work Loss .........................................................................................................................14

Travel Delay .......................................................................................................................................15

Medical Care ......................................................................................................................................16

Costs Derived from Medical and Work Loss Costs ..............................................................................23

Incidence ...............................................................................................................................................25

Fatalities ............................................................................................................................................25

Nonfatal Injuries.................................................................................................................................25

Property Damage Crashes ..................................................................................................................28

Unreported Crashes and Injuries ........................................................................................................28

Uninjured Occupants in Injury Crashes ..............................................................................................29

Crashes ..............................................................................................................................................29

Alcohol Costs ......................................................................................................................................31

Fatalities ............................................................................................................................................31

Nonfatal Injuries.................................................................................................................................32

Underreported Alcohol .......................................................................................................................34

BAC Levels .........................................................................................................................................37

PDO Crashes ......................................................................................................................................38

Uninjured Occupants ..........................................................................................................................39

Alcohol-Involved Crash Costs ........................................................................................................... 40

Alcohol Crash Causation ................................................................................................................... 41

State Costs ......................................................................................................................................... 43

Speeding .............................................................................................................................................. 47

Safety Belt Use ................................................................................................................................. 51

Source of Payment.......................................................................................................................... 59

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration i

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000
Appendix B Appendix B – Psychic Morbidity Resulting from Motor Vehicle Injuries ehicle Injuries................ 63

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Related Disorders .................................................................... 64

Incidence of PTSD and MDE ............................................................................................................. 68

Appendix C – Functional Losses Resulting from

Motor Vehicle Crashes ................................................................................................................. 70

Appendix D – Definitions of Economic Costs ................................................................... 73

Appendix E – Discount Rates .................................................................................................... 75

Appendix F – Detailed Methodology

for Selected Human Capital Unit Cost Estimates........................................................... 77

Appendix G – Hours of Delay per Heavy Vehicle Crash .............................................. 79

Appendix H – Nonfatal Injury Unit Cost by Body Region ............................................. 80

References.......................................................................................................................................... 82

ii U.S. Department of Transportation

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Appendix A – Comprehensive Costs ...................................................................................... 61

Appendix B 
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

1

Summary

In the year 2000, the total economic cost of motor vehicle crashes in the United States was $230.6 billion.

This represents the present value of lifetime economic costs for 41,821 fatalities, 5.3 million non-fatal

injuries, and 28 million damaged vehicles. These figures include both police-reported and unreported crashes.

All costs in this report are expressed in year 2000 economics using a 4 percent discount rate. Nonfatal

injury costs are stratified by severity level based on the Abbreviated Injury Scale. The cost components

include productivity losses, property damage, medical costs, rehabilitation costs, travel delay, legal and

court costs, emergency services (such as medical, police, and fire services), insurance administration

costs, and the costs to employers. Values for more intangible consequences such as physical pain or lost

quality of life are not included in this estimate, but are discussed separately in Appendix A of this report.

Economic Impact of Crashes

■ The cost of motor vehicle crashes that occurred in 2000 totaled $230.6 billion. This is equal to

approximately $820 for every person living in the United States and 2.3 percent of the U.S. Gross

Domestic Product.

■ The lifetime economic cost to society for each fatality is over $977,000. Over 80 percent of this amount

is attributable to lost workplace and household productivity.

■ Each critically injured survivor cost an average of $1.1 million. Medical costs and lost productivity

accounted for 84 percent of the cost for this most serious level of non-fatal injury.

■ Lost workplace productivity costs totaled $61 billion, which equaled 26 percent of the total costs.

Lost household productivity totaled $20.2 billion, representing 9 percent of the total costs.

■ Total property damage costs for all crash types (fatal, injury, and property damage only) totaled

$59 billion and accounted for 26 percent of all costs.

■ Property damage only crashes (in which vehicles were damaged but nobody was injured) were the

most costly type of crash, due to their very high rate of occurrence. Their costs totaled $59.8 billion and

accounted for 26 percent of total motor vehicle crash costs.

■ Present and future medical costs due to injuries occurring in 2000 were $32.6 billion, representing

14 percent of the total costs. Medical costs accounted for 26 percent of costs from non-fatal injuries.

■ Travel delay cost $25.6 billion or 11 percent of total crash costs.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

2 U.S. Department of Transportation

■ Approximately 9 percent of all motor vehicle crash costs are paid from public revenues. Federal

revenues accounted for 6 percent and states and localities paid for approximately 3 percent.

Private insurers pay approximately 50 percent of all costs. Individual crash victims pay approximately

26 percent while third parties such as uninvolved motorists delayed in traffic, charities, and health care

providers pay about 14 percent. Overall, those not directly involved in crashes pay for nearly threequarters of all crash costs, primarily through insurance premiums, taxes and travel delay. In 2000

these costs, borne by society rather than by crash victims, totaled over $170 billion.

Incidence of Crashes

■ 5.3 million persons were injured in 16.4 million motor vehicle crashes in 2000, including 41,821 fatalities.

Twenty-one percent of these injuries occurred in crashes that were not reported to police.

■ 27.6 million vehicles were damaged in motor vehicle crashes in 2000; 23.6 million or 86 percent of

these vehicles were damaged in incidents that incurred property damage only. The remaining 14 percent

involved injuries to occupants of the vehicle, or to non-occupants such as pedestrians or bicyclists.

■ Approximately half of property damage only crashes and a fifth of all injury crashes are not reported to

the police

Alcohol Involvement in Crashes

■ Alcohol-involved crashes resulted in 16,792 fatalities, 513,000 nonfatal injuries, and $50.9 billion in

economic costs in 2000, accounting for 22 percent of all crash costs.

■ Costs for crashes involving a driver or non-occupant with a blood alcohol content of .10 percent or

greater (the legal definition in most states), accounted for 75 percent of the total of all alcohol-involved

crash costs.

■ The impact of alcohol involvement increases with injury severity. Alcohol-involved crashes accounted

for 10 percent of property damage only (PDO) crash costs, 21 percent of nonfatal injury crash costs; and

46 percent of fatal injury crash costs.

■ Although drinking drivers may experience impaired judgment, perceptions and reaction times, not all

crashes in which alcohol was present were caused by alcohol. Crashes in which alcohol was the cause

resulted in 13,570 fatalities, over 360,000 nonfatal injuries, and nearly $40 billion in economic costs.

This is approximately 80 percent of the alcohol-related fatalities and 78 percent of costs. It represents

32 percent of all fatalities and 17 percent of all costs from motor vehicle crashes.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

3

Impact of Speed-related Crashes

■ Crashes in which at least one driver was exceeding the legal speed limit or driving too fast for conditions

cost $40.4 billion in 2000.

■ Speed-related crashes are associated with 12,350 fatalities, 690,000 nonfatal injuries and damage

to 2.3 million vehicles in property damage only crashes. This represents 30 percent of all fatalities;

13 percent of all nonfatal injuries, and 10 percent of all property damage only crashes.

■ Speed-related crashes cost an average of $144 for every person in the United States.

Safety Belt Use

■ In the year 2000, safety belts prevented 11,900 fatalities and 325,000 serious injuries, saving $50 billion

in medical care, lost productivity, and other injury related costs.

■ Safety belt non-use represents an enormous lost opportunity for injury prevention. In the year 2000

alone, over 9,200 persons were killed and 143,000 were injured unnecessarily because they failed to

wear their safety belts, costing society $26 billion.

■ Over the last 26 years, safety belts have prevented 135,000 fatalities and 3.8 million injuries. This

saved society $585 billion in medical care, lost productivity, and other injury related economic costs.

During the same time period, nearly 315,000 additional fatalities and 5.2 million serious injuries could

have been prevented by safety belts if all occupants had used them. This represents an economic loss of

$913 billion in unnecessary expenses and lost productivity.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 5

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Introduction

In the year 2000, 41,821 persons were killed, 5.3 million were injured, and 27.6 million vehicles were

damaged in motor vehicle crashes in the United States. The economic costs of these crashes totaled

$230.6 billion. Included in these losses are lost productivity, medical costs, legal and court costs,

emergency service costs, insurance administration costs, travel delay, property damage, and workplace

losses. The $230.6 billion cost of motor vehicle crashes represents the equivalent of nearly $820 for each

of the 281.4 million persons living in the United States, and 2.3 percent of the $9,872 billion U.S. Gross

Domestic Product for 2000.

Society, individual crash victims and their families, friends and employers are affected by motor vehicle

crashes in many ways. For example, the cost of medical care is borne by the individual in the form of

payments for insurance, deductibles, uncovered costs, and uninsured expenses. It is borne by society

through higher insurance premiums and through the diversion of medical resources away from other

medical needs, such as medical research, disease prevention and control, and basic public health needs.

There are also significant costs associated with the lost productivity experienced by an individual and

others when the victim dies prematurely or experiences a short or long-term disability. The victim’s

dependents suffer immediate economic hardship in the loss of the victim’s income and other contributions;

society also suffers by the necessity to support the victim or their dependents, and through foregone

contributions to the nation’s productivity.

This report examines these and other costs resulting from motor vehicle crashes. The purpose of presenting these costs is to place in perspective the economic losses that result from these crashes, and to provide

information to government and private sector officials for use in structuring programs to reduce or prevent

these losses.

Total economic costs are summarized in Table 1. The total economic cost of motor vehicle crashes in 2000

is estimated to have been $230.6 billion. Of this total, medical costs were responsible for $32.6 billion,

property damage losses for $59 billion, lost productivity (both market and household) $81 billion, and other

related costs $58 billion.

The most significant costs were lost market productivity and property damage, each of which separately

accounted for 26 percent of the total economic costs in 2000. For lost productivity, these high costs are a

function of the level of disability that has been documented for crashes involving injury and death. For

property damage, costs are primarily a function of the very high incidence of minor crashes in which injury

does not occur or is negligible. The value of household productivity accounts for 9 percent of total costs.

Medical care costs and emergency services (which includes police and fire services) are responsible for

about 15 percent of the total. Travel delay caused by congestion at the crash site accounts for 11 percent.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

6 U.S. Department of Transportation

Legal and court costs account for 5 percent and insurance administration costs for about 7 percent of the

total. These costs are summarized in Tables 1 and 2, and Figures 1-3. The incidence of injuries and crashes

that produced these costs is summarized in Table 3.

Alcohol consumption remains a major cause of motor vehicle crashes; 2000 data show that alcoholinvolved crashes declined slightly in incidence. Historically, approximately half of all motor vehicle

fatalities have occurred in crashes where the driver or non-occupant had been drinking, but this number

has gradually declined in recent years. Alcohol is involved in crashes that account for 22 percent of all

economic costs, with 75 percent of these costs involving crashes where a driver or non-occupant was

legally intoxicated, defined as a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of >.10.

NHTSA last examined the cost of motor vehicle crashes in 1996. At that time the report was based on 1994

data. The current report indicates a total cost from traffic crashes in 2000 of $230.6 billion, approximately

50 percent higher than our previous estimate of $150.5 billion. The higher estimate is attributable to a

number of factors. Inflation accounts for a rise of approximately 20 percent, but most of the increase is

due to higher estimates of certain cost categories. These, in turn, are partly due to improved data sources,

to changes in estimates of the incidence of some nonfatal injury categories, and to real cost increases in

excess of inflation.

One category that increased noticeably was lost productivity for serious nonfatal injuries. Unit costs for

these injuries increased due to new studies that revealed higher levels of long-term impairment than

previously estimated. Medical care costs also increased substantially. This reflects both an increase in

treatment costs and an increase in the prevalence of injury in the most costly medical care categories.

This increase may be partially due to an uncharacteristically low occurrence of these injuries during 1994

as corresponding injury levels have been fairly stable since that time. By far the largest contribution to this

increase is higher estimates of travel delay costs. Recent studies indicate that travel delay is far more

costly than previously estimated. Again, this is partially due to better data, but it also reflects the growing

problem of congestion on our nation’s roadways.

The report indicates that while alcohol-involved crashes are more costly than in 1994, they account for a

smaller portion of the overall crash cost. This reflects the impact of efforts at federal, state, and local

levels to reduce the incidence of drunk driving. The report also estimates the portion of alcohol-involved

crash costs that were actually caused by impaired driving. Although drinking drivers may experience

impaired judgment, perceptions and reaction times, not all crashes in which alcohol was present were

caused by alcohol. Alcohol was the cause in crashes that produced 78 percent of crash costs where at least

one driver or non-occupant had been drinking.

The report also analyzes the impact of safety belt use as well as the cost the nation incurs from failure to

wear safety belts. Over the last quarter century, safety belts have prevented over 135,000 fatalities and

3.8 million nonfatal injuries, which saved $585 billion in costs (in 2000 dollars). During this same period,

the failure of a substantial portion of the driving population to wear belts caused 315,000 unnecessary

deaths and 5.2 million nonfatal injuries, costing the nation $913 billion in preventable medical costs, lost

productivity, and other injury related expenditures.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

7

The Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) used in this report provides the basis for stratifying societal costs by

injury severity. Significant sources of economic loss, such as medical costs and lost productivity, are highly

dependent on injury outcome. AIS codes are primarily oriented toward the immediate threat to life resulting from the injury, and are estimated soon after a crash occurs. Although the more serious injuries tend to

have more serious outcomes, AIS codes are not always accurate predictors of long-term injury outcomes.

Some injuries with low AIS codes, such as lower extremity injuries, can actually result in serious and

expensive long-term outcomes. There is currently no incidence database organized by injury outcome. The

development and use of such a database could improve the accuracy of economic cost estimates, and might

result in a significant shift in the relative number of injuries regarded as serious.

This report will focus on “average” costs for injuries of different severity. While this approach is valid for

computing combined costs at a nationwide level, the costs of individual cases at different injury levels can

vary quite dramatically. The average costs outlined in this report are significant; however, in individual

cases they can be exceeded by a factor of three or more. There is considerable evidence to indicate that

the most serious injuries are not adequately covered by insurance. Depending on the financial ability and

insurance coverage of the individual crash victims, the medical and rehabilitation costs, as well as the loss

in wages resulting from serious injury, can be catastrophic to the victim’s economic well being in addition

to their physical and emotional condition.

When using this report for the analysis of crash impact and injury countermeasures, it is important to

include only those cost elements that are applicable to the specific programs addressed. For example,

programs that encourage safety belt use may reduce costs associated with injuries, but would not have an

effect on property-damage crashes. Therefore, careful consideration should be given to the nature of the

benefits from any proposal before incorporating the results of this report into analyses or recommendations.

Economic costs represent only one aspect of the consequences of motor vehicle crashes. Persons injured in

these crashes often suffer physical pain and emotional anguish that is beyond any economic recompense.

The permanent disability of spinal cord damage, loss of mobility, loss of eyesight, and serious brain injury

can profoundly limit a person’s life, and can result in dependence on others for routine physical care. More

common, but less serious injuries, can cause physical pain and limit a victim’s physical activities for years

after the crash. Serious burns or lacerations can lead to long-term discomfort and the emotional trauma

associated with permanent disfigurement. For an individual, these non-monetary outcomes can be the most

devastating aspect of a motor vehicle crash.

The family and friends of the victim feel the psychic repercussions of the victim’s injury acutely as well.

Caring for an injured family member can be very demanding for others in the family, resulting in economic

loss and emotional burdens for all parties concerned. It can change the very nature of their family life; the

emotional difficulties of the victim can affect other family members and the cohesiveness of the family unit.

When a crash leads to death, the emotional damage is even more intense, affecting family and friends for

years afterward and sometimes leading to the breakup of previously stable family units.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

8 U.S. Department of Transportation

Action taken by society to alleviate the individual suffering of its members can be justified in and of itself;

in order to increase the overall quality of life for individual citizens. In this context, economic benefits from

such actions are useful to determine the net cost to society of programs that are primarily based on

humane considerations. If the focus of policy decisions was purely on the economic consequences of motor

vehicle crashes, the most tragic, and, in both individual and societal terms, possibly the most costly aspect

of such crashes would be overlooked.

The focus of the costs presented in this report is on the economic impact of motor vehicle crashes. These

costs do not represent the more intangible consequences of these events and should not, therefore, be used

alone to produce cost-benefit ratios. Measurement of the dollar value of intangible consequences such as

pain and suffering has been undertaken in numerous studies. These studies have estimated values based

on wages for high-risk occupations and prices paid in the market place for safety products, among other

measurement techniques. These “willingness to pay” costs can be an order of magnitude higher than the

economic costs of injuries. Most researchers agree that the value of fatal risk reduction falls in the range

of $2-5 million per life saved. Appendix A discusses these estimates.

Table 1

Summary of Total Costs, 2000

2000 Dollars (Millions)

PDO MAIS 0 MAIS 1 MAIS 2 MAIS 3 MAIS 4 MAIS 5 Fatal Total % Total

INJURY COMPONENTS

Medical $0 $3 $11,088 $6,813 $5,854 $4,794 $3,146 $924 $32,622 14.15%

Emergency Services $733 $56 $452 $92 $46 $30 $8 $35 $1,453 0.63%

Market Productivity $0 $0 $8,151 $10,908 $8,996 $3,886 $4,151 $24,898 $60,991 26.45%

Household Productivity $1,111 $84 $2,664 $3,193 $2,653 $1,023 $1,413 $8,010 $20,151 8.74%

Insurance Admin. $2,741 $204 $3,453 $3,012 $2,379 $1,181 $645 $1,552 $15,167 6.58%

Workplace Cost $1,208 $87 $1,175 $852 $537 $172 $78 $364 $4,472 1.94%

Legal Costs $0 $0 $699 $2,172 $1,990 $1,230 $756 $4,272 $11,118 4.82%

Subtotal $5,793 $433 $27,682 $27,041 $22,456 $12,315 $10,197 $40,056 $145,973 63.31%

NON-INJURY COMPONENTS

Travel Delay $18,976 $1,970 $3,620 $369 $118 $36 $87 $383 $25,560 11.09%

Property Damage $35,069 $2,597 $17,911 $1,724 $856 $359 $89 $430 $59,036 25.60%

Subtotal $54,046 $4,567 $21,532 $2,093 $974 $395 $176 $812 $84,595 36.69%

Total $59,838 $5,000 $49,214 $29,134 $23,430 $12,710 $10,373 $40,868 $230,568 100.00%

% Total 25.95% 2.17% 21.34% 12.64% 10.16% 5.51% 4.50% 17.72% 100.00%

Note: MAIS is the maximum injury severity level experienced by the victim. PDO is property damage only.

Totals may not add due to rounding.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

9

Table 2

Summary of Unit Costs, 2000

2000 Dollars

PDO MAIS 0 MAIS 1 MAIS 2 MAIS 3 MAIS 4 MAIS 5 Fatal

INJURY COMPONENTS

Medical $0 $1 $2,380 $15,625 $46,495 $131,306 $332,457 $22,095

Emergency Services $31 $22 $97 $212 $368 $830 $852 $833

Market Productivity $0 $0 $1,749 $25,017 $71,454 $106,439 $438,705 $595,358

HH Productivity $47 $33 $572 $7,322 $21,075 $28,009 $149,308 $191,541

Insurance Admin. $116 $80 $741 $6,909 $18,893 $32,335 $68,197 $37,120

Workplace Cost $51 $34 $252 $1,953 $4,266 $4,698 $8,191 $8,702

Legal Costs $0 $0 $150 $4,981 $15,808 $33,685 $79,856 $102,138

Subtotal $245 $170 $5,941 $62,020 $178,358 $337,301 $1,077,567 $957,787

NON-INJURY COMPONENTS

Travel Delay $803 $773 $777 $846 $940 $999 $9,148 $9,148

Prop Damage $1,484 $1,019 $3,844 $3,954 $6,799 $9,833 $9,446 $10,273

Subtotal $2,287 $1,792 $4,621 $4,800 $7,739 $10,832 $18,594 $19,421

Total $2,532 $1,962 $10,562 $66,820 $186,097 $348,133 $1,096,161 $977,208

Note: Unit costs are on a per-person basis for all injury levels. PDO costs are on a per damaged vehicle basis.

Table 3

Incidence Summary – 2000 Total Reported and Unreported Injuries

Percent

Police-Reported Unreported Total Unreported

VEHICLES

Injury Vehicles 3,080,321 839,486 3,919,807 21.42%

PDO Vehicles* 12,288,482 11,343,214 23,631,696 48.00%

Total Vehicles 15,368,803 12,182,700 27,551,503 44.22%

PEOPLE IN INJURY CRASHES

MAIS 0 2002667 545791 2,548,458 21.42%

MAIS 1 3599995 1059590 4,659,585 22.74%

MAIS 2 366987 69020 436,007 15.83%

MAIS 3 117694 8209 125,903 6.52%

MAIS 4 36264 245 36,509 0.67%

MAIS 5 9463 0 9,463 0.00%

MAIS 1-5 Non-Fatal Injuries 4,130,403 1,137,064 5,267,467 21.59%

Fatal 41821 0 41,821 0.00%

Total Injured Persons 4,172,224 1,137,064 5,309,288 21.42%

CRASHES

PDO 7,013,424 6,473,930 13,487,355 48.00%

Injury 2,221,773 605,504 2,827,277 21.42%

Fatal 37,409 0 37,409 0.00%

Total Crashes 9,272,607 7,079,434 16,352,041 43.29%

* PDO vehicles are crash involved vehicles in which nobody was injured. All PDO vehicles, including those involved in injury

crashes, are included under PDO vehicles.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

10 U.S. Department of Transportation

Figure 1

Components of Total Costs

Figure 2

Components of Total Costs, Fatalities
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

11

Figure 3

Components of Total Costs, Non-Fatal Injuries

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 13

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Human Capital Costs

The costs documented in this report are the economic or “human capital” cost components for motor

vehicle injuries and crashes. The conceptual framework of human capital costs encompasses direct and

indirect costs to individuals and to society as a whole from the decline in the general health status of those

injured in motor vehicle crashes. During their lifetime, individuals function as producers and consumers of

economic output. Injured individuals are considered a fundamental part of total societal impact; the value

of their decreased production and their decreased consumption is included in the total cost. The resources

consumed as a result of any injury or crash that might otherwise be used for increasing the societal wellbeing are also counted in the total cost.

Emergency treatment, initial medical costs, rehabilitation costs, long-term care and treatment, insurance

administration expenses, legal costs, and employer/workplace costs are all considered to be direct costs.

Indirect costs are productivity costs in the workplace due to temporary and permanent disability and

decreases in household productivity emanating from these disabilities. Property damage and travel delay,

crash costs other than those directly attributable to an injury, are estimated for injury and non-injury

crashes. A description of each of these cost categories is included in Appendix D.

The human capital method used to calculate the injury and crash costs does not include the costs associated with loss of emotional well being unless medical attention is required. Values for “pain and suffering”

or permanent losses in functional capacity, unless they result in permanent earnings loss, are also not

quantified by human capital measures. However, this report does include an appendix (B) that discusses

the psychosocial costs of injury. This chapter will address these impacts in an effort to put the quantified

economic impacts into perspective with the emotional impact that affects the lives of crash victims and

their families. In Appendix A, estimates of Comprehensive costs, which include a value for lost quality of

life, are also discussed

Human capital costs can be used in the following ways:

■ To calculate the economic cost savings from reducing a given number of injuries or crashes

■ To demonstrate the economic magnitude of the crash problem in the United States or in any given

location

■ To evaluate the impact of injury on a specific sub-sector of the economy such as medical costs or

employer costs

Unit costs in this report were developed by Ted Miller and associates. There were significant changes made

in the development of these unit costs as compared to earlier reports, Miller et al (1995); Miller (1995),

Miller et al (1991), Blincoe and Faigin (1992), Miller (1993) and Blincoe (1996). The following modifications were made:
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

14 U.S. Department of Transportation

Market Productivity

Unit costs for market productivity costs are now more carefully targeted than they were in previous studies.

First of all, injuries were categorized using MAIS-90 definitions rather than MAIS-85. A 4 percent discount

rate was used in calculating costs. More importantly, an AIS-specific calculation is used for disabled and

partially disabled, rather than a flat 17 percent rate across each MAIS category. This allowed for the costs

to be fine-tuned, reflected most obviously in the MAIS-5 category where the unit cost dramatically increased.

This is intuitive, as one would expect to see a much higher rate of disability in an MAIS-5 injury.

In addition, comprehensive earnings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were used to calculate the

final market productivity figures. The data were divided by gender and by employment status and included

ages above 75 in the fatality lost productivity calculations.

The methods used to derive future work loss costs parallel the CPSC Injury Cost Model and details can be

found in its documentation. For nonfatal injuries, the work loss cost is the sum of the lifetime loss due to

permanent disability (averaged across permanently disabling and non-disabling cases) plus the loss due

to temporary disability. The lifetime wage and household work losses due to a death or permanent total

disability were computed first and then discounted to present value with the standard age-earnings model

described in Rice et al. (1989) and in Miller et al (1998). The inputs to this model were for 1997. They

include, by age group and sex, survival probabilities from National Vital Statistics Reports (1999), plus

average annual earnings and the value of household work performed from Expectancy Data (1999). The

distribution of crash cases by body part, MAIS, fracture/dislocation, age group, and sex, was estimated

from CDS files (1988-91 for AIS-85 and 1993-99 for AIS-90).

For survivors, NCCI probabilities that an injury will result in permanent partial or total disability and on

the percentage of earning power lost to partial disability were applied to compute both the number of

permanently disabled victims and the percentage of lifetime work lost. These probabilities are by diagnosis

and whether the victim was admitted to the hospital. ICDmap85 and ICDmap90 (Johns Hopkins University,

1997) were used to assign 1985 and 1990 Occupational Injury Codes (OIC) injury codes or code groups to

each category. The permanent disability estimates in the injury cost model account for children’s longer life

span but are not child-specific in other respects.

Diagnosis-specific probabilities of injuries to employed people causing wage loss came from CDS 1988-91

(for AIS-85) and CDS 1993-99 (for AIS-90). The days of work loss per person losing work were estimated

from the 1993 Survey of Occupational Injury and Illness of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; this survey

contains employer reports of work losses for more than 600,000 workplace injuries.

Household Work Loss

Since the parent with the lowest salary often stays home as the caregiver, caregiver wages are estimated

as the mean hourly earnings for non-supervisory employees in private non-agricultural industries. Injured

people lose housework on 90 percent of the days they lose wage work (S. Marquis, The RAND Corporation,

Personal Communication, 1992). Thus, the days of household work lost were computed from the days of

wage work lost. Household work was valued based on the cost of hiring people to perform household tasks
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

15

(e.g., cooking, cleaning, yard work) and the hours typically devoted to each task from Expectancy Data

(1999). Lost productivity for repairing vehicles involved in crashes was updated from Miller, Viner, et al.,

(1991) and was included in the lost household productivity.

For temporary disability, it was assumed that an adult caregiver would lose the same number of days of

wage work or housework because of a child’s temporarily disabling injury as an adult would lose when

suffering the same injury. This assumption may cause a slight overestimate because the caregiver may be

able to do some work at home. Conversely the work loss of other individuals that visit a hospitalized child

or rush to the child’s bedside shortly after an injury, was not estimated, nor was any temporary wage work

or household work loss by adolescents.

Travel Delay

Travel delay was computed similarly to methods outlined in Miller, Viner et al. (1991), with four refinements.

First, the prior work differentiated delay by crash severity in proportion to police time at the crash scene

using data from 3 police departments. Data from two additional departments were added to this study. This

resulted in an hours-of-delay ratio of 49 to 85.6 to 232.8 for the delays due to PDO, injury, and fatal crashes

respectively. Second, the hours of delay per urban interstate crash were increased in proportion to the

major increase documented by Lan and Hu (2000) in Minneapolis-St Paul. Their study found an average of

5,057 hours of delay per heavy truck crash in Minneapolis-St Paul (and 2,405 hours per crash without

heavy vehicles involved). The study collected data on 289 heavy truck crashes (and 3,762 other crashes).

Third, the previous analysis arbitrarily assumed no travel delay on some classes of roadways and arbitrarily stepped down the delay estimates for other classes. Instead, starting from the hours of delay per

crash on urban interstates (the most complete and data-driven estimates available). Delay for other

roadway classes by rural-urban location was computed in proportion to traffic density (vehicle-miles per

lane mile) for each roadway class relative to urban interstate. Traffic density was computed from Federal

statistical data (FHWA, 1998). The costs per hour of delay from the prior analysis (60 percent of the wage

rate for non-commercial drivers and 100 percent for commercial drivers) were used since they fell in the

range prescribed by current guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Transportation (U.S. DOT, 1997).

Table 1 of that report details the delay estimates per heavy vehicle crash by roadway class and location.

Finally, it was assumed that only police-reported crashes delayed traffic. This was based on the premise

that any substantial impact on traffic would attract the attention of police. It is recognized that this may be

a conservative assumption since a portion of these unreported crashes would have some limited impact on

traffic flow.

The resulting estimate of travel delay is considerably higher than previously estimated. This reflects both

improved data and the growing problem of congestion on our nation’s roadways. A recent study conducted

by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory also examined travel delay from motor vehicle crashes, but limited

its study to highways and principal arterials. That study (Chin et al, 2002) used a modeling technique to

predict losses and estimated delay in vehicle hours rather than person hours. When the vehicle occupancy

rate used in this study was applied to the Chin et al study, the average person hours lost per freeway and

principal arterial crash was 466, compared to 428 in this study – a difference of only 9 percent.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

16 U.S. Department of Transportation

Medical Care

Injury Incidence and Severity Estimation

To estimate injury incidence and severity, procedures developed by Miller and Blincoe (1994) and Miller,

Galbraith et al. (1995) were used and also applied in Blincoe (1996), Miller, Levy et al. (1998), Miller,

Lestina, and Spicer (1998), and Miller, Spicer et al. (1999).

Estimating crash costs requires estimates of the number of people and vehicles involved in a crash, the

severity of each person’s injuries, and the costs of those injuries and associated vehicle damage and travel

delay. The following section describes the methodology used to estimate the incidence and severity of motor

vehicle crashes. The succeeding section explains how the costs of injuries and associated vehicle damage

and travel delay were estimated.

Crash databases do not accurately describe the severity of motor vehicle crashes. Accordingly, several

adjustments were made to more accurately reflect the severity of crashes. These adjustments are

described below.

NHTSA’s General Estimates System (GES) provides a sample of U.S. crashes by police-reported severity for

all crash types. GES records injury severity by crash victim on the KABCO scale (National Safety Council,

1990) from police crash reports. Police reports in almost every state use KABCO to classify crash victims

as K-killed, A-incapacitating injury, B-non-incapacitating injury, C-possible injury, or O-no apparent injury.

KABCO ratings are imprecise and inconsistently coded between states and over time. The codes are selected

by police officers without medical training, typically without benefit of a hands-on examination. Some

victims are transported from the scene before the police officer who completes the crash report even

arrives. Miller, Viner et al. (1991) and Blincoe and Faigin (1992) documented the great diversity in KABCO

coding across cases. O’Day (1993) more carefully quantified the great variability in the use of the A-injury

code between states. Viner and Conley (1994) explained the contribution to the variability in the state

definitions of A-injury. Miller, Whiting et al. (1987) found that police-reported injury counts by KABCO

severity varied by state because of differing state crash reporting thresholds (the rules governing which

crashes should be reported to the police). Miller and Blincoe (1994) found that state reporting thresholds

often changed over time.

Thus, police reporting does not accurately describe injuries medically. To minimize the effects of variance

in severity definitions between states, reporting thresholds, and police perception of injury severity, NHTSA

data sets that included both police-reported KABCO and medical descriptions of injury in the Occupant

Injury Coding system (OIC; AAAM 1990, AAAM 1985) were utilized. OIC codes include AIS score and body

region, plus more detailed injury descriptors. The 1999 Crashworthiness Data System (CDS; NHTSA 2000)

and 1984-86 National Accident Sampling System (NASS; NHTSA 1987) data were utilized. The CDS describes

injuries to passenger vehicle occupants involved in tow-away crashes. The 1984-86 NASS data provide

the most recent medical description available for injuries to medium/heavy truck and bus occupants,

non-occupants, and other non-CDS crash victims. The NASS data were coded with the 1980 version of AIS,

which differs slightly from the 1985 version; but NHTSA made most AIS-85 changes well before their

formal adoption. CDS data were coded in AIS-90. The analysis of two versions of AIS were differentiated

because AIS-90 scores and OIC codes differ greatly from codes and scores in AIS-85, especially for brain
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

17

and severe lower limb injury. Garthe et al. (1996) found that AIS scores shifted for approximately 25 percent

of all OICs between AIS-85 and AIS-90.

The 2000 CDS and GES non-CDS weights were used to weight the CDS and NASS data respectively, so they

represent the estimated injury victim counts in motor vehicle crashes during 2000. In applying the GES

weights to old NASS data, the analysis was controlled for police-reported injury severity, restraint use,

alcohol involvement, and occupant type (CDS occupant, non-CDS occupant, and non-occupant). Weighting

the NASS data to GES restraint use and alcohol involvement levels updates the NASS injury profile to a

profile reflecting contemporary belt use and alcohol involvement levels, although it remains imperfect in

terms of its representation of airbag use in non tow-away crashes. At the completion of the weighting

process (Figure 4), the result was a hybrid CDS/NASS injury-level file. Weights from the 2000 CDS file

were used for CDS sample strata.

1When costs will occur in future years, their present value, defined as the amount one would have to invest today in

order to pay these costs when they come due, is computed. A present value is computed by applying an inflation-free

discount rate (the reverse of an interest rate).

The second step required for estimating average crash costs was the generation of estimates of per-crashvictim costs by maximum AIS (MAIS), body part, and whether the victim suffered a fracture/dislocation. A

forty-one level body part descriptor was created based on information provided by the NASS/CDS variables

describing the body region, system/organ, lesion, and aspect of each injury. Burns were classified as a

separate category due to the lack of location information for such injuries.

The present value of future costs (computed at 3 percent, 4 percent, and 7 percent discount rates) has

been calculated, and a societal perspective that includes all costs – costs to victims, families, government,

insurers, and taxpayers has been adopted.1 The societal perspective captures the full scope of injury costs.

More constrained perspectives like government’s or health care payers’ include only a subset of the costs.

Cost estimates are in 2000 dollars. They include:

■ Medically related costs

■ Police and fire (emergency) services

■ Property damage

■ Lost wage work

■ Lost household work

Figure 4

 The Merger of NASS, CDS, and GES Files Cost Estimation
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

18 U.S. Department of Transportation

■ Legal costs

■ Insurance administration costs

■ Travel delay

■ Monetized Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs)

In addition to these cost categories, the probability of partial and total permanent disability, the percent

of permanent disability for those partially disabled, short-term days lost, and non-monetized QALYs lost

were estimated.

Medically Related Costs

Medical costs include ambulance, emergency medical, physician, hospital, rehabilitation, prescription,

and related treatment costs, as well as ancillary costs (for crutches, physical therapy, etc.), and the

administrative costs of processing medical payments to providers.

Medical costs were estimated from nationally representative samples that use International Classification

of Diseases, 9th Edition, Clinical Modification (ICD) diagnosis codes to describe the injuries of U.S. crash

victims, namely, the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) for hospital-admitted victims and the

National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for non-hospitalized victims. The analysis included the following

steps; the more complex of which are explained in further detail below:

1. Assign a cause or probable cause distribution for each NHDS and NHIS case.

2. Estimate the costs associated with each crash case in NHDS and NHIS.

3. Use ICDmap85 and ICDmap90 (Johns Hopkins University, 1997) to assign 1985 and 1990 OIC injury

codes or code groups to each NHDS and NHIS case.

4. Collapse the code groups to achieve adequate case counts per cell by MAIS, body part, and whether

fracture/dislocation was involved.

5. Tabulate ICD-based costs by MAIS, diagnosis code grouping, and whether hospital admitted.

6. Estimate the percentage of hospital admitted cases by diagnosis group from CDS 1996-1999 and apply it

to collapse the cost estimates to eliminate admission status as a stratifier (necessary because current

admission rates are unknown for crash victims in non-CDS strata).

7. Infer costs for diagnostic groups that appear in NASS or CDS crash data but not in the ICD-based file.

Cause Assignment

NHDS has seven data fields where hospitals code injury diagnoses or causes. When all seven fields are

used, a cause code is rarely included. Typically, diagnostic codes (which drive reimbursement) are given

priority over E-codes. More than 70 percent of NHDS cases with less than six diagnoses are E-coded.

It was assumed that causes by age group, sex, and diagnoses for these cases were representative of all

injury admissions with less than six diagnoses. For NHDS cases with six or seven diagnoses, causation

probabilities were inferred by age group, sex, and diagnosis using data for cases with at least six diagnoses
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

19

in E-coded state hospital discharge censuses that were previously pooled from California, Maryland,

Missouri, New York, and Vermont (Miller, Cohen, and Weirsema 1996).

For non-hospitalized injury survivors, motor vehicle crash victims were identified based on information

provided by NHIS variables identifying the record as an injury (allinj), which is not chronic (cdonset),

took place on a street (locacc), was vehicle-related (mtrveh), and occurred with the involved vehicle in

movement (movingmv).

Estimation of Medical Costs Associated With Each Crash Case in NHDS and NHIS

Except for added tailoring to differentiate the costs of child from adult injury and estimating fatality costs,

the methods used were those employed in building the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC)

injury cost model. These methods are summarized below and documented in detail in Miller et al. (1998).

Peer-reviewed summaries of them appear in the childhood injury costs in Miller, Romano, and Spicer

(2000) and Lawrence et al. (1999).

Although the methods for estimating the costs and consequences associated with each case differed for

fatalities, survivors admitted to the hospital, and survivors treated elsewhere; in each case, costs of initial

treatment were extracted from nationally representative or statewide data sets. For survivors by diagnosis,

medical follow-up, rehabilitation, and long-term costs were added, computed from national data on the

percentage of medical costs associated with initial treatment. Due to lack of available data, these percentages were less current than the costs for initial treatment.

In the case of fatalities, the distribution of place of injury death by broad cause grouping was obtained from

1994 vital statistics data. All fatalities were assigned the difference in present value of burial costs in 2000

versus the value at the end of the victim’s expected life span (from Miller, Pindus et al., 1995), as well as

coroner or medical examiner costs from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (1983). Except for

deaths at the scene, we added costs for emergency transport from 1987 National Medical Expenditure

Survey (NMES) data (the most recent available when these computations were done). For deaths on arrival

or in the emergency department, we also added average charges for injury fatalities in the emergency

department by external cause grouping and age group (child vs. adult) from 1997 South Carolina emergency department discharge data.

For deaths in a hospital or nursing home, as well as hospitalized survivors, medical costs were computed in

stages. Maryland and New York were the only states that regulated and tracked the detailed relationships

between charges, payments, and actual costs of hospital care in recent years. (Because health care payers

negotiate widely varying, sometimes large discounts from providers, hospital charges bear little relationship to actual hospital costs.) Non-fatal computations were by diagnostic group; fatal computations were

by cause group. Using average cost per day of hospital stay by state as an adjuster (Bureau of the Census.

US Statistical Abstract 1997, Table 189, p. 129), diagnosis-specific or cause-specific hospital costs per day

were price-adjusted from Maryland in 1994-95 and New York in 1994 (the last year of that state’s cost

control) to national estimates. (The costs per day for survivors by age were not differentiated because the

cost per day by diagnosis almost never varied significantly between children and adults, at the 95 percent

confidence level.) The costs per day by diagnosis or cause were multiplied by corresponding age-groupspecific NHDS lengths of hospital stay by survival.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

20 U.S. Department of Transportation

Table 4

Length of Stay Comparisons

17 Pooled Length of Stay Unweighted Cases

MAIS-90 State HDSs NHDS CDS Sd 17 HDSs NHDS CDS

HEAD

1 2.6 2.2 6 10.27 2598 1651 2265

2 2.8 2.8 6.1 11.84 11932 5509 1575

3 8.3 6.8 10.2 16.46 4391 3257 1374

4 11.4 8.8 11.6 18.5 7249 6712 769

5 17.8 15.7 10.4 27.2 3180 2031 546

FACE

1 1.8 4.2 6.3 1.74 4466 2753 8108

 2 3.2 3 8.6 3.43 3086 2180 945

 3 6 5.3 9.6 8.88 777 519 146

 4 7.9 8.2 8 8.03 195 161 1

NECK

1 2.4 1 5.3 3.34 56 10 837

2 4.9 5 8.2 5.29 45 2 341

 3 9.7 2 9.7 10.96 36 1 185

 4 60 12.6 1 18

 5 1 1 20.1 1 1 20

THORAX

1 2 1.9 6.2 1.96 2326 588 2522

 2 3.3 2.9 7.5 4.79 2065 459 500

 3 5.9 5.2 9.4 7.15 5179 2783 1037

 4 12 12 11.7 12.97 1321 580 393

 5 16.2 3.6 10.9 22.28 135 37 94

ABDOMEN & PELVIS

1 1.9 2 7.1 2.11 990 626 1205

2 5.8 5.1 10.3 7.24 3360 1168 905

 3 10.4 9 11.3 12.42 1574 742 237

 4 11.6 12.6 10.7 15.1 936 611 142

 5 11.6 9.7 13.6 15.61 914 479 65

SPINE

1 2.2 2.7 5.8 2.38 1565 1233 593

 2 4.9 5.4 9.8 6.42 5251 7925 567

 3 12.6 13.2 11.2 15.76 1322 842 100

 4 17 12.9 20.8 19.43 706 277 13

 5 25.6 31.3 16 32.02 306 126 18
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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21

The lengths of stay from recent CDS files were not used because of data scarcity and lack of representation.

The latter concern arose from comparing lengths of stay for highway crash victims by MAIS and body

region in NHDS, CDS, and pooled cause coded hospital discharge data from 17 states. As Table 1 shows,

possibly because CDS samples relatively few hospital-admitted cases, its lengths of stay are quite different

than national averages.

Physician costs estimated from the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services

(CHAMPUS) data for 1992-1994 were added to hospital costs. Costs after hospital discharge were

computed from the most recent nationally representative sources available: the 1987 NMES and National

Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) data for 1979-1987. A concern about past cost studies is the

reliance on adult data in estimating childhood injury costs. Past studies estimated lifetime medical spending due to a child’s injury from the all-age average acute care spending shortly after the injury and the

longer-term recovery pattern of adults or victims of all ages. The hospitalization cost estimates in this

report are, instead, age-group specific. This report also accounts for differences in resiliency between

children and adults; using longitudinal 1987-1989 health care claims data from Medstat Systems, diagnosisspecific factors were developed to adjust all-age and adult estimates of follow-up and longer-term care to

child-specific treatment patterns. The percentage of medical costs in the first six months that resulted from

the initial medical visit or hospitalization did not vary with age.

17 Pooled Length of Stay Unweighted Cases

MAIS-90 State HDSs NHDS CDS Sd 17 HDSs NHDS CDS

UPPER EXTREMITIES

1 2.2 2.4 6.2 3.48 1765 1930 4663

 2 3.2 3.2 8.9 4.03 6901 10750 1168

 3 6.6 4.5 8.4 6.98 2324 2162 557

LOWER EXTREMITIES

1 2.9 3.1 6.8 3.99 1673 2036 5613

 2 5.5 4.8 9 6.63 17780 27617 2730

 3 8.9 8.3 10.5 10.19 13154 53413 1506

 4 14.7 10.7 12 15.69 766 704 3

 5 21.4 32.1 30.43 127 129 

EXTERNAL BURNS

1 3 4.7 5 4.2 6347 14800 181

 2 5.6 5.9 14 10.83 3933 15909 2

 3 7.7 6.6 11.2 13.51 2745 7531 5

 4 11.9 8.7 17.07 562 1348 

 5 22.4 19.1 19.9 29.78 108 145 5
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

22 U.S. Department of Transportation

After the initial six months, children proved more resilient; the percentage of their total treatment costs

incurred in the first six months was often higher, especially for brain injuries. These conclusions come

from an analysis of 15,526 episodes of childhood injury and 40,624 episodes of non-occupational adult

injury to victims covered by private health insurance. For each episode, the claims data covered a range

of 13-36 months and an average of 24 months post injury. Where the victim was discharged to a nursing

home, Miller et al.(1998), nursing home lengths of stay were estimated at one month for fatalities, two

years for burn victims, and ten years for other catastrophic injuries, at a cost double the cost of an intermediate care facility (from Bureau of the Census, 1997).

Costs per visit for other nonfatal injuries came from CHAMPUS. Medstat-adjusted NMES and NCCI data

were used to estimate costs per adult or child victim from costs per visit. The diagnostic detail preserved

was maximized; therefore, sample size considerations dictated bringing costs forward onto NHTSA files

that represented averages across victims of all ages.

For two categories of injuries – spinal cords and burns – medical costs were not estimated from NHDS and

NHIS files because of the limited number of SCI cases and burn center admissions in the files. In addition,

for spinal cord injuries, long-term costs are not captured in the NHDS and NHIS data. Information from a

special study (Berkowitz et al., 1998) was used to estimate first year and annual medical costs for spinal

cord injuries. Costs were estimated by applying the age and gender distribution of spinal cord injury

victims in the CDS 1993-99 to a lifetime estimating model with 1997 life expectancy tables adjusted for

spinal cord injury mortality rates from Berkowitz et al. (1998). Costs for burns were adapted from Miller

et al. (1993), using their regression equations.

Mapping ICD Codes Into OIC Codes

To make the ICD-based injury descriptors compatible with CDS and NASS descriptors, ICD was mapped to

body part and AIS-85 and AIS-90. AIS-85 was mapped using the ICDmap85. This map lists AIS by each ICD

code up to the 5-digit level of detail. For NHIS, which uses almost exclusively 3-digit ICDs (85.5 percent of

the data set), the lowest AIS within that 3-digit group was selected.

AIS90 was mapped using the ICDmap90. The ICDmap90 uses artificial intelligence and input from injury

coding experts to translate ICD-9CM codes into AIS-90 injury codes and severity scores. This map is more

complex than ICDmap-85 and considers up to 6 ICD codes plus age of the victim. It also assigns AIS body

region codes (which accurately classify AIS-85 body region as well).

Body part was mapped to AIS from previously collapsed ICD groupings (Miller et al., 1995) and fracture or

dislocation was identified with the ICD codes. Since the NHIS uses almost exclusively 3-digit ICDs, it often

is not possible to know the body part for its non-fracture ICDs since non-fracture body part tends to be

coded in the fourth or fifth digit. For NHIS non-fracture cases, a body region was assigned rather than a

body part category using the ICDmap-90 software.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

23

Inferring Costs for Categories That Appear in NASS or CDS Data

But Not In the ICD-Based File

Costs for AIS/body part/fracture diagnosis categories that appear in NASS or CDS crash data but not in the

ICD based files were assigned as follows:

1. Mean costs were estimated for each AIS.

2. Based on these averages, incremental cost ratios from one, preferably lower, AIS to another were

estimated. Lower AIS was preferred because it offered larger case counts.

3. Costs for empty ICD-based cells were then assigned by multiplying costs from adjacent cells by this ratio.

For instance, if the mean medical cost for AIS-2 and AIS-3 are 5 and 10, respectively, then the incremental

ratio for AIS-2 to AIS-3 was set to: 10/5 = 2. Then an empty AIS-3 cell was estimated by multiplying the

cost for AIS-2 times the incremental AIS-2 to AIS-3 ratio.

For body parts with no cost estimates available for any AIS, a general average cost for the appropriate AIS

was assigned.

Merging ICD-Based Costs Onto the Re-Weighted NASS/CDS Injury-Level File

Typically, motor vehicle crash patients suffer multiple injuries. In the ICD-based data, when a victim had

two injuries of maximum AIS, the body part of the more costly injury was assigned. In merging costs onto

the re-weighted NASS/CDS injury level file (NASS/CDS lists up to six injuries per injury victim) the medical,

work loss, and quality of life costs were merged separately. In each case, the cost for the injury with the

highest cost in the cost category was assigned. Thus, if a victim’s ruptured spleen had the highest medical

cost and her broken leg had the highest work loss cost, this hybrid set of costs was assigned to the case.

Costs Derived from

Medical and Work Loss Costs

Legal and insurance administration costs per crash victim were derived from the medical and work loss

costs merged in the NASS/CDS file as described above, using models developed by Miller (1997). The

methods used to derive theses costs are shown in detail in Appendix F.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 25

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Incidence

Fatalities

The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is a complete census of all the fatal crashes on United

States’ public roads that result in death within 30 days of the crash. In the year 2000, FARS recorded a

total of 41,821 deaths in motor vehicle crashes. This total represents 1,105 more individuals than in 1994,

the last year for which NHTSA examined economic costs. This represents a 2.7 percent increase over six

years. However, during this same period, the resident population increased 8.1 percent, the number of

licensed drivers increased by 8.7 percent, and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) increased 16.6 percent. With

this increase in exposure, the overall fatality rate actually declined from 1.7 deaths per million VMT in

1994 to 1.5 per million in 2000. Table 5 shows the historical trend in fatalities, exposure measures, and

fatality rates from 1975 to 2000.

Nonfatal Injuries

Though the FARS census provides an accurate count of fatalities, there is no equivalent data source for

nonfatal injuries. These injuries must be estimated from several data sources. These sources include the

Crashworthiness Data System (CDS), the General Estimates System (GES), the National Automotive

Sampling System (NASS), the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), and injury estimates provided to

the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) by individual states. A detailed discussion of these databases

is available in NHTSA’s 1990 report (Blincoe and Faigin, 1992); however, the methods used for combining

these data in this report are somewhat different.

The CDS contains detailed information on police-reported injuries incurred by passengers of towed passenger vehicles. These represent about 54 percent of all police-reported injuries and typically involve the most

serious injuries to vehicle occupants. Estimates of these cases for each survivor injury severity category

(MAIS) were derived directly from the 2000 CDS. These estimates were then increased by the ratio of CDS

equivalent injury cases from the GES, to the CDS total. This was done because the GES sample is significantly

larger than the CDS, and it has a smaller standard error. It is therefore likely to be a better predictor of

total injuries. However, the level of detail available in the CDS makes that system a more reliable predictor

of injury severity.

Injuries that occur in non-tow-away crashes, to occupants of large trucks, buses, motorcycles, bicyclists

or to pedestrians, are not included in the CDS data and, therefore, must be derived from other sources.

The GES provides estimates based on all crash and vehicle types. However, detailed information regarding

injury severity (MAIS) is not provided. Instead, GES provides information based on vague police-reported

injury designations such as “incapacitated,” and “non-incapacitated,” and “possible injury.” These are
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

26 U.S. Department of Transportation

frequently referred to as “KABCO” designations.* In order to estimate GES injuries based on the MAIS

coding structure, a translator derived from 1982-1986 NASS data was applied to the GES police-reported

injury profile. NASS data are used because they were the last available data that provided both MAIS and

KABCO designations for non-CDS cases.

Table 5

Persons Killed with Fatality Rates by Population, Licensed Drivers,

Registered Vehicles, and Vehicle Miles Traveled, 1975-2000

Fataility

Fatality Fatality Registered Fatality Vehicle Rate per

Resident Rate per Licensed Rate per Motor Rate per Miles 100m

Year Fatalities Population 100,000 Drivers 100,000 Vehicles Registered Traveled VMT

1975 44525 215973 20.62 129791 34.31 126153 35.29 1328 3.4

1976 45523 218035 20.88 134036 33.96 130793 34.81 1402 3.2

1977 47878 220239 21.74 138121 34.66 134514 35.59 1467 3.3

1978 50331 222585 22.61 140844 35.74 140374 35.85 1545 3.3

1979 51093 225055 22.70 143284 35.66 144317 35.40 1529 3.3

1980 51091 227225 22.48 145295 35.16 146845 34.79 1527 3.3

1981 49301 229466 21.49 147075 33.52 149330 33.01 1555 3.2

1982 43945 231664 18.97 150234 29.25 151148 29.07 1595 2.8

1983 42589 233792 18.22 154389 27.59 153830 27.69 1653 2.6

1984 44257 235825 18.77 155424 28.48 158900 27.85 1720 2.6

1985 43825 237924 18.42 156868 27.94 166047 26.39 1775 2.5

1986 46087 240133 19.19 159486 28.90 168545 27.34 1835 2.5

1987 46390 242289 19.15 161816 28.67 172750 26.85 1921 2.4

1988 47087 244499 19.26 162854 28.91 177455 26.53 2026 2.3

1989 45582 246819 18.47 165554 27.53 181165 25.16 2096 2.2

1990 44599 249464 17.88 167015 26.70 184275 24.20 2144 2.1

1991 41508 252153 16.46 168995 24.56 186370 22.27 2172 1.9

1992 39250 255030 15.39 173125 22.67 184938 21.22 2247 1.7

1993 40150 257783 15.58 173149 23.19 188350 21.32 2296 1.7

1994 40716 260327 15.64 175403 23.21 192497 21.15 2358 1.7

1995 41817 262803 15.91 176628 23.68 197065 21.22 2423 1.7

1996 42065 265229 15.86 179539 23.43 201631 20.86 2486 1.7

1997 42013 267784 15.69 182709 22.99 203568 20.64 2562 1.6

1998 41501 270248 15.36 184980 22.44 208076 19.95 2632 1.6

1999 41717 272691 15.30 187170 22.29 212685 19.61 2691 1.6

2000 41821 281422 14.86 190625 21.94 217028 19.27 2750 1.5

*K=killed; A=incapacitating injury; B=non-incapacitating injury; C=possible injury; O=no injury.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

27

Non-CDS equivalent cases were isolated from the 1982-86 NASS files and split according to their safety

belt status. Belt status was examined separately because belts have a significant impact on injury profiles,

and belt use has increased significantly since the 1982-86 period. The examined categories were: belted

occupants, unbelted occupants, unknown belt status occupants, and non-occupants including motorcyclists.

A separate translator was derived for each of these categories. These translators were applied to their

corresponding non-CDS equivalent cases from the 2000 GES file to estimate total non-CDS equivalent

injuries by MAIS level for 2000.

The sum of the CDS and non-CDS cases represents police-reported injuries as estimated in these systems.

However, previous analysis comparing state police reports to GES counts have found that actual policereported injuries exceed those accounted for in the GES by 10-15 percent (Blincoe and Faigin, 1992).

This issue was reexamined by comparing 1996-1999 state police-reported injury counts to the 1996-1999

GES and it was found that the ratio of police reports to GES counts was still in that same range. The

average ratio over these 4 years was 1.13. Therefore, for the current analysis, a 13 percent adjustment

was applied to the 2000 injury total.

The above methods resulted in an estimate of 4.1 million nonfatal police-reported injuries, 87 percent of

which are minor (MAIS1). These estimates are summarized in Table 3 of the Introduction.

Table 5a

Persons Injured with Injury Rates by Population,

Licensed Drivers, Registered Vehicles,

and Vehicle Miles Traveled, 1990-2000

Police Injury Injury Registered Injury Vehicle Injury

Reported Resident Rate per Licensed Rate per Motor Rate per Miles Rate per

Year Injuries Population 100,000 Drivers 100,000 Vehicles Registered Traveled 100m VMT

1990 3231000 249464 1295 167015 1935 184275 1753 2144 151

1991 3097000 252153 1228 168995 1833 186370 1662 2172 143

1992 3070000 255030 1204 173125 1773 184938 1660 2247 137

1993 3149000 257783 1222 173149 1819 188350 1672 2296 137

1994 3266000 260327 1255 175403 1862 192497 1697 2358 139

1995 3465000 262803 1318 176628 1962 197065 1758 2423 143

1996 3483000 265229 1313 179539 1940 201631 1727 2486 140

1997 3348000 267784 1250 182709 1832 203568 1645 2562 131

1998 3192000 270248 1181 184980 1726 208076 1534 2632 121

1999 3236000 272691 1187 187170 1729 212685 1521 2691 120

2000 3189000 281422 1133 190625 1673 217028 1469 2750 116
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

28 U.S. Department of Transportation

Property Damage Crashes

Crashes that do not result in injury, Property Damage Only crashes (PDOs), are by far the most common

type of crash. Unfortunately, information on PDOs is unreliable because of the wide variety of damage

reporting thresholds in the states. For this report, the ratio of PDO involved vehicles to injuries (Blincoe

and Faigin, 1992) was applied to the 2000 injury total. Unreported crashes, which account for 48 percent

of all PDOs, were also estimated from the ratio developed in that report. A total of 12.3 million vehicles

were estimated to be damaged in police-reported PDO crashes. Another 11.3 million were estimated to be

damaged in non-police reported crashes, for a total of 23.6 million PDO involved vehicles.

Unreported Crashes and Injuries

Although most crashes are reported to police, a significant number go unreported. This underreporting is

most likely to occur in crashes where the injured party is at fault, and does not want to involve police

due to concerns about insurance or legal repercussions; or in which minor bicycle or pedestrian injuries

occur. In addition, a variety of administrative, clerical, or procedural errors may result in the injury going

unrecorded. For example, in some cases, helicopters or ambulance transport may occur prior to police

arrival, or information on the injured parties may not be provided to police. Estimates of unreported

injuries vary by injury severity with nearly one quarter of all minor injuries and almost half of all PDO

crashes remaining unreported. By contrast, it is believed that all critical or fatal injuries are reported.

For this report, estimates of the portions of injuries that were not reported to police are taken from Blincoe

(1996). Unreported PDOs were derived from Blincoe and Faigin (1992) and Blincoe (1996). The relative

incidence of unreported crashes is illustrated in Figure 5.

Figure 5

Distribution of Reported/Unreported Injuries
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

29

Uninjured Occupants in Injury Crashes

Although uninjured occupants in injury crashes (MAIS 0 injuries) incur no long-term medical care costs,

they can incur substantial costs for lost productivity, insurance administration, travel delay, property

damage, emergency services and workplace costs. To determine the incidence rate for these occupants,

an estimate was made using the 2000 GES, taking the ratio of uninjured occupants to injured occupants

in crashes where at least one person was injured. This ratio was then applied to the total number of injured

occupants to estimate a total of 2.5 million uninjured occupants. It is likely that police records do not

capture all of the uninjured that are involved in injury crashes. If this is the case, then this method will

produce a conservative estimate of uninjured occupants in injury crashes.

Crashes

Estimates of the number of crashes that occurred in 2000 were derived based on the ratio of injuries

and vehicles to crashes from the 2000 GES. Separate ratios were derived for injury crashes (based on

injured persons) and property damage crashes (based on vehicles involved). These ratios were applied

to total injuries and total vehicles in PDOs to estimate crashes. Fatal crashes were taken directly from

the 2000 FARS file.

The incidence analysis provided above is summarized in Table 3, located in the introduction of

this report.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 31

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Alcohol Costs

Alcohol consumption is a major cause of motor vehicle crashes and injury. Historically, about half of all

motor vehicle fatalities occur in crashes in which a driver or non-occupant has consumed a measurable

level of alcohol prior to the crash, and of these cases, nearly 80 percent involved a level of consumption

which met the typical legal definition for intoxication or impairment - 0.10 percent Blood Alcohol Content

(BAC) or greater. In the last decade, there has been an increased awareness of the problems caused by

impaired driving. Many groups, from NHTSA to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Students Against

Destructive Decisions (SADD) and state and local agencies, have promoted the enactment of laws and

implemented public awareness campaigns to assist in combating this problem. Legal measures such as

administrative license revocation/suspension have been enacted in numerous states. As a result, there has

been a marked decrease in the number of fatalities resulting from alcohol-involved crashes. Table 6 displays

the share of fatalities associated with alcohol involvement (>0.01 BAC) and legal intoxication (.0.10 BAC)

since 1982. Alcohol involvement in fatal crashes has declined from 60 percent of all fatalities in 1982 to

40 percent in 2000, while legal intoxication (defined as .10 BAC or greater) has declined from 49 percent

to 32 percent over the same period. While these declines are encouraging, alcohol still remains a significant causative factor in motor vehicle crashes.

As of February 2002, 29 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico define legal intoxication, the level

at which DWI convictions can be made, as having a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or higher. Since

complete data on the effects of 0.08 percent on fatality and injury rates are not yet available, this report

will use the definition of legal intoxication of 0.10 BAC or higher. This definition remains consistent with

the categories of BAC used in NHTSA publications. FARS data indicate that fatalities involving legally

intoxicated drivers or nonoccupants account for 79 percent of the fatalities arising from all levels of

alcohol involvement.

Fatalities

The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) provides detailed information about all traffic fatalities that

occur within 30 days of a crash on a public road. Each case is investigated and documentation regarding

alcohol involvement is included. Alcohol involvement can be indicated either by the judgment of the investigating police officers or by the results of administered BAC tests. Cases where either of these factors is

positive are taken as alcohol-involved and any fatalities that result from these crashes are considered to

be alcohol-involved fatalities. In addition, there are a large number of cases where alcohol involvement is

unknown. In 1986, NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) developed an algorithm

based on discriminant analysis of crash characteristics that estimates the BAC level for these cases (Klein,

1986). More recently, NHTSA has developed a more sophisticated technique to accomplish these estimates
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

32 U.S. Department of Transportation

using multiple imputation (Rubin et al, 1998), and will substitute this method beginning with the 2001

FARS file. However, NHTSA has already recomputed previous FARS files using this method and alcohol

involvement rates based on the new method are used in this report. The total number of alcohol-involved

fatalities by BAC level is shown in Table 6 from 1982 through 2000. The alcohol involvement rates in this

table were derived using the newer multiple imputation method.

Nonfatal Injuries

NHTSA collects crash data though a two-tiered system, a system that was redesigned in 1988 to replace

the former National Accident Sampling System (NASS); the NASS Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) and

the General Estimates System (GES) comprise this new method.

The CDS is a probability sample of a subset of police reported crashes in the U.S. It offers detailed data on

a representative, random sample of thousands of minor, serious, and fatal crashes. The crash in question

must be police-reported and must involve property damage and/or personal injury resulting from the

crash in order to qualify as a CDS case. It must also include a towed passenger car or light truck or van

in transport on a public road or highway. Injuries in vehicles meeting these criteria are analyzed at a level

of detail not found in the broader GES.

Table 6

Alcohol-Involved and Intoxicated Traffic Fatalities, 1982-2000

Alcohol-Involved Legally Intoxicated

Total (=>.01 BAC) Percent (=>.10 BAC) Percent

Year Fatalities Fatalities of Total Fatalities of Total

1982 43945 26173 60% 21702 49%

1983 42589 24635 58% 20651 48%

1984 44257 24762 56% 20232 46%

1985 43825 23167 53% 18682 43%

1986 46087 25017 54% 19927 43%

1987 46390 24094 52% 19219 41%

1988 47087 23833 51% 19243 41%

1989 45582 22424 49% 18247 40%

1990 44599 22587 51% 18363 41%

1991 41508 20159 49% 16462 40%

1992 39250 18290 47% 14741 38%

1993 40150 17908 45% 14502 36%

1994 40716 17308 43% 13968 34%

1995 41817 17732 42% 14162 34%

1996 42065 17749 42% 14183 34%

1997 42013 16711 40% 13421 32%

1998 41501 16284 39% 12839 31%

1999 41717 16192 39% 12833 31%

2000 41821 16792 40% 13277 32%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

33

In contrast, the GES collects data on a sample of all police-reported crashes, without a specific set of

vehicle and severity criteria. Although GES collects data on a broader array of crashes, it collects less

information on each crash, limiting possible analysis of alcohol involvement. Cases are restricted to a

simple “yes,” “no,” or “unknown” alcohol indication on the police crash report, as observed by the reporting

police office. Actual BAC test results are not available through the GES sample.

Due to these limitations in the GES file, alcohol involvement rates were taken from CDS cases stratified

by injury severity level. Although there has been a steady decline in alcohol involvement for fatal crashes

(as measured in FARS), the relative scarcity of data on alcohol involvement in nonfatal injury crashes

produces data spikes that do not reflect this trend. For the more severe injury categories only a few

hundred cases, and sometimes less than a hundred cases, are sampled for alcohol involvement. It is

probable that these occasional spikes reflect normal sample variation at specific injury severity levels

rather than actual jumps in alcohol rates. Therefore, in order to estimate the alcohol involvement in

nonfatal injuries, CDS alcohol distributions were taken from a multi-year CDS file that represents the

average alcohol involvement rates from 1997-2000. Note that the basic rates used in this analysis represent police reported rates only. Some cases in CDS files contain additional alcohol information obtained

by the accident investigator that were not in the police report. These data were removed from the CDS files

in order to provide a basis for estimating underreported alcohol involvement, which is derived from studies

that are based on police reported alcohol rates. This adjustment is addressed in a following section.

Since CDS samples only tow away crashes involving passenger vehicles, there is some uncertainty as to

whether the alcohol involvement rates in CDS crashes are representative of crashes that do not fit the CDS

profile. To address this issue, data from the GES were divided into CDS equivalent crashes and non-CDS

crashes and examined for comparability of their alcohol involvement profiles. Data were examined from

1996 through 2000. It was found that the rates of alcohol involvement for the 3 KABCO injury categories

were fairly stable over this time period. The average rates of alcohol involvement from 1996-2000 were

as follows:

CDS Non-CDS Ratio

Possible Injury ( C ) 6.9% 3.5% 2.0

Non-Incapacitating Injury (B) 12.5% 6.4% 1.95

Incapacitating Injury (A) 16.1% 9.8% 1.64

The rates of alcohol involvement in non-CDS cases are significantly lower than in CDS equivalent cases from

the same GES files. The rate of alcohol involvement is twice as high in C (Possible) and B (Non-Incapacitating)

CDS equivalent injuries as in non-CDS injuries. For A (Incapacitating) injuries, the rate is 64 percent

higher. In order to adjust for these differences, 2000 GES non-CDS cases were converted to MAIS equivalents using KABCO/MAIS translators. These translators were derived from 1982-1986 NASS data. These

NASS files were used because they are the only files available that contain non-CDS cases with both MAIS

and KABCO ratings. The resulting injury matrix was then used to produce a weighted average ratio of

alcohol involvement in non-CDS cases to CDS cases for each MAIS injury severity level. The results are

summarized in the upper part of Table 7. They show a gradual increase in the relative rate of alcohol

involvement for non-CDS cases as injury severity rises. Rates for minor injuries (MAIS1) are approximately

half of their CDS equivalent counterparts, while those for critical injuries (MAIS5) are 60 percent of their

CDS counterparts.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

34 U.S. Department of Transportation

Using these ratios, an estimate was derived of alcohol involvement rates for non-CDS cases. This estimate

results from the product of the CDS police-reported rates and the MAIS specific ratio. This estimate is

shown in the lower part of Table 7. The CDS and non-CDS alcohol involvement rates were then weighted

together based on the relative frequency of injury in each category for each MAIS level. These average

frequencies are shown in the upper part of Table 8.

Underreported Alcohol

Although police accident reports typically include an indication of whether alcohol was involved, the nature

of accident investigations often precludes an accurate assessment of alcohol involvement at the crash site.

Police underreporting of alcohol involvement has been well documented in numerous studies. Typically,

studies on underreporting compare the results of BAC tests administered in a medical care facility to

police reports of alcohol involvement. In a 1982 study of injured drivers, Terhune found that police

correctly identified 42 percent of drivers who had been drinking. These rates of identification improved

at higher BAC levels, ranging from only 18.5 percent of those with a BAC of .01-.09, to 48.9 percent for

those with BACs of .10 or greater. In a 1990 study, Soderstrom et al. found that police correctly identified

alcohol use in 71 percent of legally intoxicated, injured drivers. Earlier studies by Maull et al. in 1984 and

Dischinger and Cowley in 1989, found that police correctly identified 57.1 percent and 51.7 percent of

intoxicated drivers, respectively. The Dischinger and Cowley study also found a lower identification rate

for “involved but not intoxicated” drivers of 28.6 percent. In a 1991 study of injured motorcycle drivers,

Soderstrom et al, found that police correctly identified only half the drivers with positive alcohol readings

later identified by the hospital.

Table 7

Estimated Ratio of Non-CDS to CDS Equivalent Alcohol Involvement

Rates in GES, Stratified by Translated MAIS Severity Levels

Non-CDS/CDS Implied GES

A B C Ratio All Yes Non-CDS

0 1.86% 8.00% 90.15% 100.00% 0.503877 6.22% 3.13%

1 5.85% 21.78% 72.36% 100.00% 0.509660 6.40% 3.26%

2 33.52% 25.68% 40.80% 100.00% 0.539859 15.90% 8.58%

3 41.87% 16.36% 41.77% 100.00% 0.547845 21.64% 11.86%

4 72.75% 15.48% 11.77% 100.00% 0.580993 16.35% 9.50%

5 91.12% 3.32% 5.55% 100.00% 0.599462 27.08% 16.23%

6 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% 100.00% 0.608659 40.15% 24.44%

Fatal 84.02% 11.36% 4.62% 100.00% 0.592685

Total 7.61% 18.97% 73.42% 100.00% 0.511252 7.23%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

35

These early studies demonstrate that during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the police were identifying

approximately half of all legally intoxicated drivers, and about one quarter of all drivers who were alcohol

involved, but not legally intoxicated. It is clear from the studies that police are more accurate in identifying

alcohol involvement as the BAC rate increases. This may reflect the more obvious nature of impaired

behavior on the part of drivers who have higher BAC levels, as well as a tendency to investigate more

thoroughly the more serious crashes that result from higher BACs.

In previous versions of this report (Blincoe and Faigin,1992 and Blincoe, 1996) the studies cited above

were used to estimate the impact of police underreporting of alcohol involvement. However, those studies

are over a decade old, and when applied to current data, they produced results that imply a higher rate of

alcohol involvement in less severe injuries than in fatalities and more severe injuries. This is both counterintuitive and at odds with historical alcohol involvement patterns. Moreover, over the last decade there

has been a concerted effort on the part of federal, state and local governments to reduce alcohol related

crashes, and this has likely improved the rate of alcohol reporting during accident investigations. More

recent data was therefore needed to make this adjustment for 2000 data.

The Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES) is a system that links existing crash and injury data

so that specific person, vehicle, and event characteristics can be matched to their medical and financial

outcomes. Currently there are 25 states participating in this program and 17 of these states are part of a

data network supporting NHTSA highway safety programs. An effort was made to contact all states participating in NHTSA’s CODES project to determine whether data was available that could be used to estimate

current alcohol reporting rates. For a variety of reasons, only one state, Maryland, had data that was

properly linked to allow a comparison between alcohol assessments in police reports and actual measured

BACs. The Maryland data represent 2,070 cases admitted to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center

between 1997 and 1999. The basis for this data is thus similar to most of the studies cited above from the

late 80s and early 90s.

An analysis of these data indicated that police were correctly identifying 74 percent of all alcohol involved

cases where BACs equaled or exceeded 0.10, and 46 percent of all cases where BACs were positive, but

less than 0.10. This represents a significant improvement from the corresponding rates of only 55 percent

and 27 percent that were found in the earlier studies. This is consistent with the expectation that reporting

rates have improved, and, when applied to police reported rates in the NHTSA data bases, the more recent

factors produce overall estimates that are consistent with FARS rates of involvement for fatal crashes.

However, although these data produce logical results, they were gathered from only one state and there are

no data to confirm whether the Maryland experience is typical of the nation. These estimates are thus

subject to the caveat that these results have not been verified by broader studies from more diverse

regions. One of the previous studies (Soderstrom, 1990) was conducted at this same facility and found a

higher rate of alcohol recognition than the other studies previously discussed. A second caveat is that,

because these data were collected at a Trauma unit, they may reflect the more serious cases rather than a

sample of all injury levels. There are two different, somewhat offsetting biases that could result from this.

Trauma unit cases are more likely to involve emergency transport and treatment which may occur before

police are able to gain access to drivers to determine alcohol involvement. This could result in police

missing a larger portion of Trauma unit cases. On the other hand, the severity of the crash may prompt a

more thorough investigation by the police, resulting in a higher rate of correct alcohol identification. It is

not clear what the net effect of these biases would be.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

36 U.S. Department of Transportation

Given these caveats, reporting rates from the Maryland data were applied to the average police reported

rates for the combined CDS and non-CDS incidence. This was done by computing an average rate weighted

by the relative portion of alcohol-involved cases that were above or below 0.10 BAC. The resulting rates,

stratified by injury severity are shown in Table 8. Overall, they show an increase in alcohol involvement

as injury severity rises. Minor injuries (MAIS1) are unlikely to involve alcohol – only 8 percent of such

crashes are alcohol-involved. At the other extreme, critical injuries (MAIS 5) occur in alcohol-involved

crashes at almost the same high rate as for fatalities – 40 percent. This is not unexpected since the factors

that correlate with alcohol involvement such as time of day, sex and age of drivers, belt use, etc., are

similar for both critical and fatal injuries. Table 9 lists the factors used to estimate unknown BAC levels in

FARS that are available in both FARS and CDS. The factors listed are those that increase the probability of

alcohol involvement in NHTSA’s multiple imputation BAC estimation procedure. The table indicates similar

experience for MAIS 5 injuries and fatalities for most of these risk factors. Moreover, both fatalities and

MAIS 5 injuries experience rates of occurrence for most risk factors that are higher than those of the

overall sample.

Table 8

Average Total Alcohol Rates CDS and GES Cases,

WTD by Incidence, and Adjusted for Underreported Alcohol

BAC =0 BAC=<.10 BAC=>.10 All Yes, PR

0 96.20% 11.07% 88.93% 3.80%

1 94.78% 29.92% 70.08% 5.22%

2 85.49% 16.89% 83.11% 14.51%

3 80.90% 26.41% 73.59% 19.10%

4 84.01% 20.32% 79.68% 15.99%

5 73.95% 30.04% 69.96% 26.05%

Fatal 59.85% 20.93% 79.07% 40.15%

Total 100.00% 19.58% 80.42%

Weight 0.462 0.736

BAC =0 BAC=<.10 BAC=>.10 All Yes, Adjusted

0 89.68% 38.45% 61.55% 10.32%

1 92.01% 40.48% 59.52% 7.99%

2 78.97% 24.45% 75.55% 21.03%

3 71.21% 36.38% 63.62% 28.79%

4 76.50% 28.89% 71.11% 23.50%

5 60.15% 20.93% 79.07% 39.85%

Fatal 59.85% 20.93% 79.07% 40.15%

Total 100.00% 27.89% 72.11%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

37

BAC Levels

The breakdown between those alcohol-involved cases that were above or below .10 BAC was essentially

computed using the same techniques as noted above regarding unreported cases. However, it was not possible

to make adjustments for the non-CDS cases because there is no BAC data available in GES files. This analysis

assumes that within each injury severity category, the incidence of higher or lower BAC levels is similar for

both non-CDS and CDS cases. The BAC breakouts produce results that are less satisfying than the overall

alcohol involvement rates. There is no apparent trend towards higher BAC involvement as injury severity

increases. Rather, the portion of alcohol cases that were above .10 appears to drift somewhat randomly

between 60 and 80 percent (see Table 8). This is basically true in the original police reported data as well

as in the adjusted data, but the adjustment process seems to exacerbate the problem because a disproportionate part of MAIS 5 injuries are below .10 in police accident reports, and the adjustment factors boost

this category by much more than the higher BAC category, leaving a 20 point difference between the portion

of alcohol cases that are above .10 in fatalities and MAIS 5 injuries. The problem here appears to be a

scarcity of data. About 60-70 cases (unweighted) of MAIS 5 injuries with known BACs occur annually in

the CDS. The portion that is above .10 varies noticeably from year to year. For example, in the year 2000,

95 percent of the weighted MAIS 5 cases with known BACs were above .10, while in 1999 it was only

56 percent. With such dramatic swings it appears likely that the sample is not adequate to measure the

split in alcohol levels for MAIS 5 injuries, despite the use of a multi-year file. Given the similarities in

factors that involve alcohol use between MAIS 5 injuries and fatalities, it is likely that their alcohol split

would be similar. This report will therefore use the BAC split found in FARS for MAIS 5 injuries as well.

Table 9

Relative Frequency for MAIS 5 Injuries and Fatalities in Factors that Influence

FARS BAC Estimates which are Also Available in CDS Files

1998-2000 CDS 1998-2000

Risk Factor MAIS 5 CDS Fatal All Cases FARS

WEIGHTED

PAR Alc Involvement Yes 25.7% 20.8% 6.9% 18.7%

Age <21 23.4% 12.8% 21.8% 14.3%

Sex = Male 71.8% 68.8% 54.6% 73.2%

Restraint Not Used 52.7% 56.4% 13.8% 54.4%

Weekend 27.4% 32.9% 27.1% 33.2%

After Midnight 17.8% 21.7% 12.0% 20.5%

%LTV 40.3% 31.4% 29.6% 32.8%

UNWEIGHTED

PAR Alc Involvement Yes 24.9% 21.5% 11.4%

Age <21 21.0% 12.6% 17.2%

Sex = Male 70.7% 70.0% 58.5%

Restraint Not Used 49.8% 52.2% 22.2%

Weekend 33.7% 33.2% 28.8%

After Midnight 22.0% 27.4% 13.5%

%LTV 33.2% 29.9% 31.2%
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

38 U.S. Department of Transportation

PDO Crashes

NHTSA data from the 2000 GES indicate that alcohol was involved in 6.8 percent of PDO crashes. NHTSA

knows of no studies relating police alcohol reporting rates to actual BACs for crashes that do not involve

injury. Generally, injury based studies indicate that police are more successful detecting alcohol in the

more serious crashes involving higher BACs. For this study, it will be estimated that police successfully

detect alcohol in PDOs at the same rate as for injuries, i.e. 46.2 percent for cases under .10 BAC and

73.6 percent for cases over .10 BAC. The BAC distribution for PDOs is based on data from 1982-86 NASS

files. These files were used because BAC data is not available on PDOs in current CDS and GES files.

Given that overall alcohol involvement rates have declined since the 1982-86 period, it was possible that

the BAC distribution may have shifted as well. The only accident file with consistent BAC data going back

to that time period is FARS. FARS data were examined to determine whether there had been a shift in BAC

ratios, and it was found that the portion of crashes that were above .10 BAC has remained fairly constant.

Therefore, no adjustment was made to the BAC ratios from the 82-86 NASS data. The NASS data indicate

that 90.9 percent of PDOs that were alcohol-involved also involved a driver who was legally impaired.

PDO vehicles in crashes with police reported alcohol were estimated by taking the 6.8 percent rate from

2000 GES and applying it to total PDO vehicles. This was then apportioned into BAC categories using the

82-86 NASS rates. These totals were then increased using the same BAC specific rates used for injuries to

reflect unreported alcohol involvement. The results are shown in Table 10. Just under 10 percent of all

PDOs are estimated to have occurred in alcohol involved crashes.

Table 10

Total Incidence by Injury Level and BAC Level

 of Alcohol Involvement in Crash (Injured Persons and PDO Vehicles)

<.10 BAC = >.10 BAC ALL Positive Alcohol ALL Cases

Incidence % Total Incidence % Total Incidence % Total Incidence % Total

PDO 316522 13.8% 1984677 86.2% 2301199 9.7% 23631696 100.0%

MAIS 0 101112 38.4% 161879 61.6% 262991 10.3% 2548458 100.0%

MAIS 1 150672 40.5% 221575 59.5% 372247 8.0% 4659585 100.0%

MAIS 2 22428 24.5% 69286 75.5% 91714 21.0% 436007 100.0%

MAIS 3 13184 36.4% 23060 63.6% 36244 28.8% 125903 100.0%

MAIS 4 2478 28.9% 6100 71.1% 8578 23.5% 36509 100.0%

MAIS 5 789 20.9% 2981 79.1% 3771 39.8% 9463 100.0%

MAIS 1-5 189552 37.0% 323003 63.0% 512554 9.7% 5267467 100.0%

Fatal 3515 20.9% 13277 79.1% 16792 40.2% 41821 100.0%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

39

Uninjured Occupants

The alcohol involvement for uninjured occupants was estimated by weighting the alcohol rates of injured

persons according to the relative frequency of uninjured occupants in injury crashes from 2000 CDS files.

This assumes a similar distribution for uninjured occupants to the overall injury distribution, which includes

non-occupants as well. However, since pedestrian and pedalcyclists account for only about 4 percent of

injuries, any bias caused by this assumption will have an insignificant effect. The results of this analysis

are shown in Table 8.

The total incidence, by injury level and alcohol involvement, are summarized in Table 10 and Figure 6.

Alcohol-involved crashes account for about 40 percent of fatalities, 10 percent of PDOs, and 10 percent of

non-fatal injuries. However, alcohol involvement rates increase dramatically as the severity of non-fatal

injuries rises.

Figure 6

Incidence by BAC Involvement
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

40 U.S. Department of Transportation

Alcohol-Involved Crash Costs

As shown in Table 11, alcohol is involved in crashes that account for 21 percent of the costs that result

from nonfatal injuries and 46 percent of the costs that result from fatalities. Overall, these crashes are

responsible for 22 percent of total economic costs. The impact of alcohol-involved crashes on overall costs

is thus higher than would be indicated by the alcohol-involved incidence rates. There are several reasons

for this disproportionate influence on costs. The first is a general tendency toward greater relative severity

of alcohol-involved crashes. For all crashes, fatalities are approximately 0.8 percent of injured survivors.

This rate quadruples for crashes involving alcohol. Similarly, the rate for critical injuries (MAIS 5) triples

for alcohol cases and for severe injuries (MAIS 4) it more than doubles. The more severe and expensive

injuries represent a much higher portion of alcohol-involved cases. A second factor is demographics.

Males are disproportionately represented in alcohol-involved crashes and this makes the cost for each

alcohol-involved case higher. This occurs because males have higher earnings and participation in the work

force than females; thus there is a higher lost productivity cost associated with these crashes. In non

alcohol-involved crashes, the gender distribution is more evenly distributed. In addition, the victims of

alcohol-involved crashes tend to be of an age group where lost productivity is maximized by the discounting

process. Unit costs specific to alcohol-involved crashes are shown in Table 12. A comparison of these costs

to those in Table 2 shows significant differences in costs for both lost productivity and medical care.

Table 11

Total Cost by Injury Level and BAC Level

 of Alcohol Involvement in Crash (Millions of 2000$)

<.10 BAC = >.10 BAC ALL Positive Alcohol ALL Cases

Cost % Total Cost % Total Cost % Total Cost % Total

PDO $801 1.3% $5,025 8.4% $5,827 9.7% $59,838 100.0%

MAIS 0 $198 4.0% $318 6.4% $516 10.3% $5,000 100.0%

MAIS 1 $1,687 3.4% $2,481 5.0% $4,168 8.5% $49,214 100.0%

MAIS 2 $1,689 5.8% $5,217 17.9% $6,905 23.7% $29,134 100.0%

MAIS 3 $2,587 11.0% $4,526 19.3% $7,113 30.4% $23,430 100.0%

MAIS 4 $962 7.6% $2,369 18.6% $3,331 26.2% $12,710 100.0%

MAIS 5 $964 9.3% $3,640 35.1% $4,603 44.4% $10,373 100.0%

Fatal $3,893 9.5% $14,706 36.0% $18,600 45.5% $40,868 100.0%

MAIS 1-5 $7,889 6.3% $18,231 14.6% $26,120 20.9% $124,862 100.0%

Total $12,782 5.5% $38,280 16.6% $51,062 22.1% $230,568 100.0%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

41

Alcohol Crash Causation

Inebriated drivers often experience impaired perceptions that can lead to risky behavior such as speeding,

reckless driving, and failure to wear safety belts. They also experience reduced reaction times, which can

make it more difficult for them to perform defensive safety maneuvers. As a result, there is a general

tendency to equate the presence of alcohol with crash causation. However, there are clearly some instances

in which crashes would occur regardless of whether the driver had consumed alcohol. A recent study by

Miller, Spicer and Levy (1999) estimated the percentages of alcohol-related crashes that are actually

attributable to alcohol. In this study they examined the probability of crash involvement for drivers based

on their BAC level and then removed the normal risk of crash involvement without alcohol from the overall

risk found for drivers with positives BACs. Their study found that 94 percent of crashes at BACs of .10 or

higher, and 31 percent of crashes with positive BACs less than .10, were actually caused by alcohol. The

remaining crashes were due to bad weather, poor road conditions, non-drinking drivers, etc.

To estimate the cost of alcohol-caused crashes, these factors were applied to the data in Tables 10 and 11.

The results (summarized in Tables 13 and 14) indicate that alcohol causes crashes that result in 13,570

fatalities and over 360,000 nonfatal injuries at a cost of nearly $40 billion annually. This represents nearly

a third of all fatalities and 17 percent of all economic costs from crashes.

Table 12

Summary of Unit Costs for Alcohol-Involved Crashes, 2000

2000 Dollars

PDO MAIS 0 MAIS 1 MAIS 2 MAIS 3 MAIS 4 MAIS 5 Fatal

INJURY COMPONENTS

Medical $0 $1 $2,949 $19,134 $47,123 $153,060 $360,400 $22,095

Emergency Services $31 $22 $97 $212 $368 $830 $852 $833

Market Productivity $0 $0 $1,818 $27,806 $77,517 $115,717 $499,828 $714,649

HH Productivity $47 $33 $572 $7,696 $22,111 $30,089 $169,023 $202,693

Insurance Admin. $116 $80 $715 $7,667 $19,905 $35,602 $75,118 $37,120

Workplace Cost $51 $34 $252 $1,953 $4,266 $4,698 $8,191 $8,702

Legal Costs $0 $0 $172 $6,023 $17,223 $37,464 $88,753 $102,138

Subtotal $245 $170 $6,575 $70,490 $188,512 $377,460 $1,202,166 $1,088,230

NON-INJURY COMPONENTS

Travel Delay $803 $773 $777 $846 $940 $999 $9,148 $9,148

Property Damage $1,484 $1,019 $3,844 $3,954 $6,799 $9,833 $9,446 $10,273

Subtotal $2,287 $1,792 $4,621 $4,800 $7,739 $10,832 $18,594 $19,421

Total $2,532 $1,962 $11,196 $75,290 $196,251 $388,292 $1,220,760 $1,107,651

Note: Unit costs are on a per-person basis for all injury levels. PDO costs are on a per damaged vehicle basis.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

42 U.S. Department of Transportation

Table 14

Total Costs in Crashes Caused by Alcohol

by Injury Level and BAC Level (Millions of 2000$)

<.10 BAC = >.10 BAC Total %Total % Total

Cost % Total Cost % Total Cost Alcohol Inv. All Crashes

PDO $248 5.0% $4,724 95.0% $4,972 85.3% 8.3%

MAIS 0 $61 17.1% $299 82.9% $360 69.8% 7.2%

MAIS 1 $523 18.3% $2,332 81.7% $2,855 68.5% 5.8%

MAIS 2 $523 9.6% $4,904 90.4% $5,427 78.6% 18.6%

MAIS 3 $802 15.9% $4,254 84.1% $5,056 71.1% 21.6%

MAIS 4 $298 11.8% $2,226 88.2% $2,525 75.8% 19.9%

MAIS 5 $299 8.0% $3,421 92.0% $3,720 80.8% 35.9%

Fatal $1,207 8.0% $13,824 92.0% $15,031 80.8% 36.8%

MAIS 1-5 $2,446 12.5% $17,137 87.5% $19,583 75.0% 15.7%

Total $3,962 9.9% $35,984 90.1% $39,946 78.2% 17.3%

Table 13

Total Incidence in Crashes Caused by Alcohol

by Injury Level and BAC Level (Injured Persons and PDO Vehicles)

<.10 BAC = >.10 BAC Total % Total % Total

Incidence % Total Incidence % Total Incidence Alcohol Inv. All Crashes

PDO 98122 5.0% 1865597 95.0% 1963718 85.3% 8.3%

MAIS 0 31345 17.1% 152166 82.9% 183511 69.8% 7.2%

MAIS 1 46708 18.3% 208281 81.7% 254989 68.5% 5.5%

MAIS 2 6953 9.6% 65129 90.4% 72082 78.6% 16.5%

MAIS 3 4087 15.9% 21676 84.1% 25763 71.1% 20.5%

MAIS 4 768 11.8% 5734 88.2% 6502 75.8% 17.8%

MAIS 5 245 8.0% 2802 92.0% 3047 80.8% 32.2%

MAIS 1-5 58761 16.2% 303622 83.8% 362383 70.7% 6.9%

Fatal 1090 8.0% 12480 92.0% 13570 80.8% 32.4%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

43

State Costs

In recent years, states have continued to increase their involvement in establishing and enforcing laws

related to motor vehicle safety. This is due, in part, to federal legislation enacted in the last few years.

Legislation such as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) of 1998 allows for additional funds to be granted to states that adopt certain safety programs. This act encourages the passage

of laws by use of a $500 million federal incentive over a six-year period.

State legislators are often interested in the societal and economic cost of motor vehicle injury as they

consider new traffic safety laws, changes to existing laws and funding for enforcement of the laws. This

information can assist them in making the case to their constituencies as to the relevance of the laws

designed to make the population safer.

A state-specific distribution of total economic costs has been prepared as follows:

■ The year 2000 fatalities were obtained by state from FARS. The portion of total national fatalities in

each state was then applied directly to the total fatality cost ($40.9 billion).

■ State injury data were obtained from individual states for 1998 and 1999. In cases where data were not

available, a factor based on the trend in fatalities within the state was used to update injuries from a

data set for 1992 and 1993 – the last years for which complete data was available. The portion of total

national nonfatal injuries in each state was applied to the total cost of all nonfatal injuries, PDOs, and

uninjured occupants ($189.7 billion).

■ The total costs for each state were then adjusted to reflect locality cost differences based on the ratio

of costs in each state to the national total. Medical costs were adjusted based on data obtained from the

ACCRA Cost of Living Index and cited by Miller and Galbraith (1995). Lost productivity, travel delay and

workplace costs were adjusted based on 2000 per-capita income. Insurance administration and legal

costs were adjusted using a combination of these two inflators weighted according to the relative weight

of medical and lost productivity administrative costs. All other cost categories were adjusted using a

composite index developed by ACCRA (also provided by Miller).

These four adjustment factors were applied separately to the fatal and nonfatal costs for each state.

Weights to combine each factor were derived separately from the relative importance of each cost category

to nationwide fatal and nonfatal total costs. The sum of fatal and nonfatal costs for each state was then

adjusted to force the sum of all states’ costs to equal the national total.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

44 U.S. Department of Transportation

Table 15

Estimated 2000 Economic Costs Due to Motor Vehicle Crashes

% Per Capita

State (Millions $) % Total Cost Per Capita Personal Income

Alabama $2,788 1.2% $627 2.7%

Alaska $475 0.2% $758 2.5%

Arizona $4,272 1.9% $833 3.3%

Arkansas $1,965 0.9% $735 3.3%

California $20,655 9.0% $610 1.9%

Colorado $3,278 1.4% $762 2.3%

Connecticut $3,596 1.6% $1,056 2.6%

Delaware $706 0.3% $900 2.9%

District of Columbia $732 0.3% $1,279 3.4%

Florida $14,403 6.2% $901 3.2%

Georgia $7,850 3.4% $959 3.4%

Hawaii $655 0.3% $540 1.9%

Idaho $856 0.4% $661 2.7%

Illinois $8,984 3.9% $723 2.2%

Indiana $4,346 1.9% $715 2.6%

Iowa $2,105 0.9% $719 2.7%

Kansas $1,884 0.8% $701 2.5%

Kentucky $3,114 1.4% $771 3.2%

Louisiana $4,000 1.7% $895 3.8%

Maine $912 0.4% $715 2.8%

Maryland $4,237 1.8% $800 2.4%

Massachusetts $6,276 2.7% $988 2.6%

Michigan $8,069 3.5% $812 2.7%

Minnesota $3,065 1.3% $623 1.9%

Mississippi $2,106 0.9% $740 3.5%

Missouri $4,737 2.1% $847 3.1%

Montana $621 0.3% $688 3.1%

Nebraska $1,629 0.7% $952 3.4%

Nevada $1,873 0.8% $938 3.1%

New Hampshire $1,014 0.4% $820 2.5%

New Jersey $9,336 4.0% $1,110 3.0%

New Mexico $1,413 0.6% $777 3.5%

New York $19,490 8.5% $1,027 3.0%

North Carolina $8,270 3.6% $1,027 3.8%

North Dakota $290 0.1% $452 1.8%

Ohio $11,090 4.8% $977 3.4%

Oklahoma $2,593 1.1% $751 3.2%

Oregon $1,948 0.8% $569 2.0%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

45

The results of this analysis are depicted in Table 15. There is considerable variation in costs among the

states, with California, for example, having costs that are 93 times higher than those for Vermont. This is

primarily due to the higher incidence of death and injury in California, but also to the higher cost levels in

that state. However, as noted by Miller and Galbraith, cost comparisons between states that are based on

state injury totals can be inaccurate because injury totals do not capture differences in nonfatal injury

severity between states. This would tend to lower costs in rural states relative to urban states, which

typically have lower average speeds and consequently less severe injuries. Differences between states may

also result from different reporting practices that result in more or less complete recording of injuries from

state to state.

Differences in roadway characteristics and state of repair may account for some of this discrepancy,

though it seems likely that variation in injury reporting is also a contributing factor. Finally, the impact of

crash costs must be viewed in the context of each state’s economy. Smaller, less populated states may have

lower absolute costs, but they may also have fewer resources available to address these costs. A significant

portion of these costs is borne by the general public through state and local revenue, or through private

insurance plans. The per capita costs for each state vary from roughly $600-$1,200 compared to the

nationwide average of $819. This represents between 1.3 and 3.8 percent of the per capita income for

each state, with an overall average of 2.8 percent.

% Per Capita

State (Millions $) % Total Cost Per Capita Personal Income

Pennsylvania $8,170 3.5% $665 2.3%

Rhode Island $767 0.3% $732 2.5%

South Carolina $3,335 1.4% $831 3.4%

South Dakota $498 0.2% $659 2.5%

Tennessee $4,628 2.0% $814 3.1%

Texas $19,761 8.6% $948 3.4%

Utah $1,594 0.7% $714 3.0%

Vermont $221 0.1% $362 1.3%

Virginia $5,203 2.3% $735 2.4%

Washington $5,310 2.3% $901 2.9%

West Virginia $1,268 0.5% $701 3.2%

Wisconsin $3,756 1.6% $700 2.5%

Wyoming $424 0.2% $859 3.2%

Total $230,568 100.0% $819 2.8%

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 47

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Speeding

Excess speed can contribute to both the frequency and severity of motor vehicle crashes. At higher speeds,

additional time is required to stop a vehicle and more distance is traveled before corrective maneuvers can

be implemented. Speeding reduces a driver’s ability to react to emergencies created by driver inattention,

by unsafe maneuvers of other vehicles, by roadway hazards, by vehicle system failures (such as tire blowouts), or by hazardous weather conditions. The fact that a vehicle was exceeding the speed limit does not

necessarily mean that this was the cause of the crash, but the probability of avoiding the crash would likely

be greater had the driver or drivers been traveling at slower speeds.

NHTSA has prepared an estimate of speed-related crash costs for 2000 in order to demonstrate the relative importance of speeding in relation to other risk factors for motor vehicle crashes and their economic

consequences. A speed-related crash is defined as any crash in which the police indicate that one or more

drivers involved was exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for conditions. FARS data indicate that in

2000, a total of 12,350 fatalities, representing 29.5 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities, occurred in

speed-related crashes, which, in turn, comprised 29 percent of all motor vehicle crashes.

Table 16

Calculation of Speed-Related Crash Costs and Incidence

Based on 1985 and 1986 NASS and FARS Speed Data

1985-1986 Speed 2000

Speed 2000 Related Speed Percent

Related Costs Costs 2000 Related Speed

% Total Factor (000) (000) Incidence Incidence Related

PDO 11.49% 0.3245 $59,838 $5,735 23631696 2264813 9.58%

MAIS 0 16.64% 0.4697 $5,000 $694 2548458 353519 13.87%

MAIS 1 14.95% 0.4221 $49,214 $6,135 4659585 580816 12.46%

MAIS 2 20.76% 0.5863 $29,134 $5,044 436007 75486 17.31%

MAIS 3 22.84% 0.6448 $23,430 $4,461 125903 23973 19.04%

MAIS 4 29.63% 0.8366 $12,710 $3,140 36509 9020 24.71%

MAIS 5 35.99% 1.0162 $10,373 $3,113 9463 2840 30.01%

Fatal 35.42% 1.0000 $40,868 $12,069 41821 12350 29.53%

Total Injuries 5309288 704485 13.27%

Total Nonfatal Injuries 5267467 692135 13.14%

Total Cost $230,568 $40,390 17.52%
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

48 U.S. Department of Transportation

Table 17

Estimated 1994 Economic Costs Due to Motor Vehicle Crashes

Where Excessive Speed Was a Factor

% Per Capita

State (Millions $) % Total Cost Per Capita Personal Income

Alabama $534 1.3% $120 0.5%

Alaska $87 0.2% $139 0.5%

Arizona $772 1.9% $150 0.6%

Arkansas $366 0.9% $137 0.6%

California $3,691 9.1% $109 0.3%

Colorado $601 1.5% $140 0.4%

Connecticut $606 1.5% $178 0.4%

Delaware $125 0.3% $159 0.5%

District of Columbia $118 0.3% $207 0.6%

Florida $2,572 6.4% $161 0.6%

Georgia $1,387 3.4% $169 0.6%

Hawaii $116 0.3% $96 0.3%

Idaho $162 0.4% $125 0.5%

Illinois $1,568 3.9% $126 0.4%

Indiana $766 1.9% $126 0.5%

Iowa $373 0.9% $128 0.5%

Kansas $345 0.9% $128 0.5%

Kentucky $565 1.4% $140 0.6%

Louisiana $707 1.8% $158 0.7%

Maine $158 0.4% $124 0.5%

Maryland $732 1.8% $138 0.4%

Massachusetts $1,019 2.5% $161 0.4%

Michigan $1,410 3.5% $142 0.5%

Minnesota $558 1.4% $113 0.4%

Mississippi $414 1.0% $146 0.7%

Missouri $865 2.1% $155 0.6%

Montana $120 0.3% $133 0.6%

Nebraska $281 0.7% $164 0.6%

Nevada $329 0.8% $165 0.5%

New Hampshire $172 0.4% $139 0.4%

New Jersey $1,529 3.8% $182 0.5%

New Mexico $259 0.6% $143 0.6%

New York $3,164 7.8% $167 0.5%

North Carolina $1,434 3.5% $178 0.7%

North Dakota $54 0.1% $84 0.3%

Ohio $1,846 4.6% $163 0.6%

Oklahoma $464 1.1% $134 0.6%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

49

The 1985 and 1986 NASS files were examined in order to estimate the economic costs that relate to speedrelated crashes; these are the latest crash files that contain adequate speed information stratified by MAIS

level for all crash types. Rates of speed involvement for each severity level were compared to the rate for

1985 and 1986 fatalities (from FARS) to determine a relative speed involvement factor for that severity

level. This factor was applied to the speed involvement rate for 2000 fatalities to determine the rate of

involvement for each nonfatal severity category. This rate was applied to total costs for that category to

determine the portion of costs that were speed-related. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 16.

The costs of crashes that involved excessive speed were $40.4 billion, representing 18% of total costs. A

state specific estimate of speed-related costs was developed using the same adjustments for cost levels and

injury incidence described in the chapter on alcohol crash costs. The economic costs for speed-related

motor vehicle crashes have been summarized and this estimate is located in Table 17. Note that this

estimate does not include any adjustment for police undercounting of speed involvement. The degree to

which police correctly identify speeding drivers is not known.

There is a significant overlap between alcohol involvement and speed. Many speed-related crashes involved

alcohol and vice-versa. These two estimates should not be added together in order to account for the

portion of costs that represent the combined factors of speed and alcohol.

% Per Capita

State (Millions $) % Total Cost Per Capita Personal Income

Oregon $355 0.9% $104 0.4%

Pennsylvania $1,443 3.6% $117 0.4%

Rhode Island $127 0.3% $121 0.4%

South Carolina $628 1.6% $157 0.6%

South Dakota $97 0.2% $128 0.5%

Tennessee $861 2.1% $151 0.6%

Texas $3,475 8.6% $167 0.6%

Utah $283 0.7% $127 0.5%

Vermont $44 0.1% $72 0.3%

Virginia $921 2.3% $130 0.4%

Washington $893 2.2% $152 0.5%

West Virginia $234 0.6% $130 0.6%

Wisconsin $673 1.7% $126 0.4%

Wyoming $84 0.2% $170 0.6%

Total $40,390 100.0% $144 0.5%

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 51

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Safety Belt Use

When properly fastened, safety belts provide significant protection to vehicle occupants involved in a crash.

The simple act of buckling a safety belt can improve an occupant’s chance of surviving a potentially fatal

crash by from 45 to 73 percent, depending on the type of vehicle and seating position involved. They are

also highly effective against serious nonfatal injuries. Belts reduce the chance of receiving an MAIS 2-5

injury (moderate to critical), by 44-78 percent.2

The effectiveness of safety belts is a function of vehicle type, restraint type, and seat position. Table 18

shows the estimated effectiveness of safety belts for various seating positions for passenger cars and for

light trucks, vans, and sports utility vehicles (LTVs).

Table 18

Estimated Safety Belt Effectiveness Rates

Lap Belts Lap/Shoulder Belts

PASSENGER CARS, FRONT SEAT

Fatalities 35 45

MAIS 2-5 Injuries 30 50

PASSENGER CARS, REAR SEAT

Fatalities 32 44

MAIS 2-5 Injuries 37 49

LIGHT TRUCKS, FRONT SEAT

Fatalities 50 60

MAIS 2-5 Injuries 55 65

LIGHT TRUCKS, REAR SEAT

Fatalities 63 73

MAIS 2-5 Injuries 68 78

Sources Kahane, 2000, Morgan, 1999, NHTSA, 1984, NHTSA, 1980

2NHTSA also estimates that seat belts may be 10 percent effective against minor injuries. However, this estimate is not

as well supported by research. To simplify the report and to provide a more conservative estimate, minor injuries

are ignored in these calculations. Savings for minor injuries typically increases the overall estimate of cost savings by

2-3 percent.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

52 U.S. Department of Transportation

Although all passenger vehicles have been equipped with safety belts since 1968, a sizable minority of

vehicle occupants still neglect to use these devices. As of February 2001, about 70 percent of occupants

wear their safety belts. Usage has risen steadily throughout the last decade, largely in response to public

education programs sponsored by state and Federal safety agencies, as well as private consumer and

safety advocacy groups. A major factor in this increase has been the passage of safety belt use laws. As of

2001, all states except New Hampshire have some form of adult usage law. These laws can take the form of

either primary enforcement laws, under which police can stop drivers specifically for failing to wear seat

belts, or secondary laws, under which fines can only be levied if a driver is stopped for some other offense.

Primary enforcement laws are far more effective in increasing safety belt use. Experience in a number of

states indicates that usage rates rise from 10-15 percentage points when primary laws are passed. For

example, usage in California jumped from 70 percent to 82 percent when a primary law was passed in 1993.

Similar impacts occurred in Louisiana where usage rose 18 points, in Georgia where usage rose 17 points,

in Maryland where usage rose 13 points, and in the District of Columbia where usage rose 24 points when

they combined a new primary enforcement law with penalty points. Overall, states with primary belt use

laws have an average belt use rate that is 17 points higher than states with only secondary enforcement.

Figure 7 illustrates the nationwide trend in safety belt use rates over the last 2 decades.

Figure 7

U.S. Safety Belt Use Rates, 1983-2000
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

53

By combining safety belt use rates with effectiveness rates and national injury counts, an estimate can be

made of the impact of safety belts on fatality and casualty rates. The basic methods for these calculations

are well documented (Blincoe, 1994, Wang and Blincoe, 2001, Partyka and Womble, 1989). The effect of

increases in safety belt use on fatalities is curvilinear, i.e., the more the observed usage rate in the general

population approaches 100 percent, the more lives are saved for each incremental point increase. This

occurs because those who are most resistant to buckling up tend to be in high-risk groups such as impaired

drivers or persons who are risk takers in general. These persons are more likely to be involved in serious

crashes and are thus more likely to actually benefit from wearing their belts. Figure 8 illustrates the

relationship between lives saved and increasing rates of safety belt usage.

Figure 8

Percent Lives Saved as a Function of Belt Use

Table 19 lists the historical and cumulative impact of safety belt use on motor vehicle casualties. Over the

last 26 years, safety belts have saved 135,000 lives and prevented 3.8 million serious nonfatal injuries.

At current use rates, they are preventing 11,900 fatalities and 325,000 serious (MAIS 2-5) nonfatal

injuries annually.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

54 U.S. Department of Transportation

The failure of a large segment of the driving population to wear their belts also has significant safety

implications. If all occupants had used safety belts properly, many more lives would have been saved.

Table 19 also lists the potential safety benefits that could have been realized since 1975 had all occupants

worn their safety belts. Over this period, passenger vehicles were equipped with devices that could have

saved over 300,000 additional lives and prevented 5.2 million additional serious injuries if all vehicle

occupants had taken a few seconds to buckle their safety belts. At current (2000) belt use rates, an additional 9,200 fatalities and 143,000 serious injuries could be prevented every year if all passengers were to

wear their safety belts. This represents an enormous lost opportunity for injury prevention.

Table 19

Historical and Cumulative Impact of Safety Belt Use

on Motor Vehicle Casualties

MAIS 2-5

Injuries

Lives Lost Due MAIS 2-5 Lost Due to

Fatalities Fatalities To Safety Belt Injuries Injuries Safety Belt

Year Prevented Preventable Nonuse Prevented Preventable Nonuse

1975 978 14279 13301 33141 261803 228662

1976 796 14647 13851 27087 264802 237716

1977 682 15142 14460 23812 276860 253048

1978 679 16220 15541 20711 255815 235104

1979 594 16320 15726 20906 297110 276204

1980 575 16305 15730 20291 295345 275053

1981 548 15770 15222 19346 283874 264528

1982 678 13928 13250 23889 255505 231616

1983 809 13722 12913 28233 252495 224262

1984 1197 14424 13227 40638 267505 226867

1985 2435 14943 12508 77061 283956 206895

1986 4094 16822 12728 122747 328689 205941

1987 5141 17819 12678 151616 354980 203364

1988 5959 18633 12674 169154 365168 196014

1989 6333 18589 12256 190388 392899 202511

1990 6592 18353 11761 196858 389941 193083

1991 7011 17650 10639 197162 361899 164737

1992 7390 17215 9825 205511 357403 151891

1993 8347 17985 9638 230577 377766 147188

1994 9206 18726 9520 301963 476809 174846

1995 9790 19663 9873 265572 415228 149656

1996 10414 20169 9755 280080 427101 147021

1997 10750 20355 9605 285945 429528 143583

1998 11018 20370 9352 286329 422597 136268

1999 11197 20750 9553 304899 451014 146115

2000 11889 21127 9238 324823 467800 142977

 Total 135102 449926 314824 3848741 9013892 5165151
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Safety belt nonuse has also had a significant economic impact. Table 20 lists the economic savings that

have resulted from safety belt use over the past 26 years. Since 1975, $588 billion in economic costs

(2000$) have been saved due to safety belt use. At 2000 usage rates, safety belts are saving society an

estimated $50 billion annually in medical care, lost productivity, and other injury related costs. Table 21

lists the potential economic savings that were lost due to nonuse. These lost savings could be viewed as

costs of safety belt nonuse. Since 1975, $917 billion in unnecessary economic costs (2000$) have been

incurred due to safety belt nonuse. At current usage rates, the needless deaths and injuries that result

from nonuse continue to cost society an estimated $26 billion annually in medical care, lost productivity,

and other injury related costs.

Table 20

Historical and Cumulative Impact of Safety Belt Use

on Motor Vehicle Casualties and Economic Costs

MAIS 2-5 MAIS 2-5

Fatalities Injuries Cost/Injury Total Cost Savings (Millions)

Year Prevented Cost/Fatality Prevented Current $ Current $ 2000$

1975 978 $299,239 33141 $37,010 $1,519 $4,863

1976 796 $316,481 27087 $39,142 $1,312 $3,971

1977 682 $337,061 23812 $41,687 $1,223 $3,474

1978 679 $362,646 20711 $44,852 $1,175 $3,104

1979 594 $403,806 20906 $49,942 $1,284 $3,045

1980 575 $458,314 20291 $56,684 $1,414 $2,954

1981 548 $505,591 19346 $62,531 $1,487 $2,817

1982 678 $536,739 23889 $66,383 $1,950 $3,479

1983 809 $553,981 28233 $68,516 $2,383 $4,119

1984 1197 $577,898 40638 $71,474 $3,596 $5,960

1985 2435 $598,478 77061 $74,019 $7,161 $11,461

1986 4094 $609,602 122747 $75,395 $11,750 $18,462

1987 5141 $631,850 151616 $78,147 $15,097 $22,884

1988 5959 $657,992 169154 $81,380 $17,687 $25,745

1989 6333 $689,696 190388 $85,301 $20,608 $28,619

1990 6592 $726,961 196858 $89,910 $22,492 $29,633

1991 7011 $757,553 197162 $93,694 $23,784 $30,071

1992 7390 $780,357 205511 $96,514 $25,602 $31,423

1993 8347 $803,718 230577 $99,403 $29,629 $35,308

1994 9206 $824,298 301963 $101,948 $38,373 $44,587

1995 9790 $847,658 265572 $104,838 $36,141 $40,836

1996 10414 $872,687 280080 $107,933 $39,318 $43,152

1997 10750 $892,711 285945 $110,410 $41,168 $44,169

1998 11018 $906,616 286329 $112,130 $42,095 $44,471

1999 11197 $926,639 304899 $114,606 $45,319 $46,842

2000 11889 $957,787 324823 $118,458 $49,865 $49,865

Total 135102 3848741 $483,430 $585,314
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

56 U.S. Department of Transportation

Table 21

Historical and Cumulative Impact of Safety Belt Non-Use

on Motor Vehicle Casualties and Economic Costs

MAIS 2-5

Lives Lost Injuries Lost

Due to Due to MAIS 2-5 Total Cost Savings Forgone

Safety Belt Safety Belt Cost/Injury (Millions)

Year Nonuse Cost/Fatality Nonuse Current $ Current $ 2000$

1975 13301 $299,239 228662 $37,010 $12,443 $39,826

1976 13851 $316,481 237716 $39,142 $13,688 $41,426

1977 14460 $337,061 253048 $41,687 $15,423 $43,825

1978 15541 $362,646 235104 $44,852 $16,181 $42,735

1979 15726 $403,806 276204 $49,942 $20,145 $47,781

1980 15730 $458,314 275053 $56,684 $22,800 $47,648

1981 15222 $505,591 264528 $62,531 $24,237 $45,915

1982 13250 $536,739 231616 $66,383 $22,487 $40,128

1983 12913 $553,981 224262 $68,516 $22,519 $38,934

1984 13227 $577,898 226867 $71,474 $23,859 $39,543

1985 12508 $598,478 206895 $74,019 $22,800 $36,488

1986 12728 $609,602 205941 $75,395 $23,286 $36,586

1987 12678 $631,850 203364 $78,147 $23,903 $36,233

1988 12674 $657,992 196014 $81,380 $24,291 $35,358

1989 12256 $689,696 202511 $85,301 $25,727 $35,728

1990 11761 $726,961 193083 $89,910 $25,910 $34,137

1991 10639 $757,553 164737 $93,694 $23,494 $29,704

1992 9825 $780,357 151891 $96,514 $22,327 $27,403

1993 9638 $803,718 147188 $99,403 $22,377 $26,667

1994 9520 $824,298 174846 $101,948 $25,673 $29,830

1995 9873 $847,658 149656 $104,838 $24,059 $27,184

1996 9755 $872,687 147021 $107,933 $24,381 $26,759

1997 9605 $892,711 143583 $110,410 $24,427 $26,208

1998 9352 $906,616 136268 $112,130 $23,758 $25,099

1999 9553 $926,639 146115 $114,606 $25,598 $26,458

2000 9238 $957,787 142977 $118,458 $25,785 $25,785

Total 314824 5165151 $581,579 $913,390
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Figure 9

Savings at 2000 Belt Use Rates

Compared to Potential Savings at 100 Percent Belt Use

Figure 9 compares the portion of safety belt benefits that were achieved at 2000 belt use rates to those

that could be achieved if all occupants wore belts. Belt usage in 2000 prevented 56 percent of the fatalities

that could be saved by belts with full usage. It also prevented 69 percent of the serious injuries and 66

percent of the potential cost savings.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 59

The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

Source of Payment

The economic toll of motor vehicle crashes is borne by society through a variety of payment mechanisms.

The most common of these are private insurance plans such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield, HMOs, commercial

insurance policies, or worker’s compensation. Medicare is the primary payer for people over the age of 65.

When these sources are not available, government programs such as Medicaid may provide coverage for

those who meet eligibility requirements. Expenses not covered by private or governmental sources must be

paid out-of-pocket by individuals, or absorbed as losses by health care providers.

For this report, estimates of payment distributions for motor vehicle crashes will be based on those found

in Blincoe (1996). These are the most recent data available at this time with injury stratification that is

compatible with this report. Table 22 shows the distribution of the portion of crash related costs that are

borne by private insurers, governmental sources, individual crash victims, and other sources. These

distributions are quite variable depending on the nature of the cost category.

Table 22

Estimated Source of Payment by Cost Category

Total

Federal State Government Insurer Other Self Total

Medical 14.40% 9.77% 24.16% 54.85% 6.36% 14.62% 100.00%

Emergency Services 3.87% 75.75% 79.62% 14.74% 1.71% 3.93% 100.00%

Market Productivity 16.20% 3.06% 19.26% 41.09% 1.55% 38.10% 100.00%

HH Productivity 0.00% 41.09% 1.55% 57.36% 100.00%

Insurance Admin 0.89% 0.51% 1.40% 98.60% 100.00%

Workplace Costs 100.00% 100.00%

Legal/Court 100.00% 100.00%

Travel Delay 100.00% 100.00%

Property Damage 65.00% 35.00% 100.00%

Source: Blincoe, 1996

In Table 23, total costs are distributed according to the proportions listed in Table 22. The results indicate

that approximately $21 billion, or 9 percent of all costs are borne by public sources, with federal revenues

accounting for 6 percent and states accounting for just under 3 percent. This is the equivalent of $203 in

added taxes for every household in the United States.3

 Private insurers paid $116 billion, or 50 percent,

while individual crash victims absorbed $60 billion or 26 percent. Other sources, absorbed $33 billion

(14 percent) of the total cost. This reflects unpaid charges borne by health care providers and charities,

but the bulk of it occurs because of travel delay costs, which are borne by other drivers who are delayed

by motor vehicle crashes.

3 Based on 103,874,000 households in 1999. (Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2000)
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

60 U.S. Department of Transportation

To some extent it is illusory to disaggregate costs across payment categories because ultimately, it is

individuals who pay for these costs through insurance premiums, taxes, direct out-of-pocket cost, or higher

charges for medical care. A real distinction can be made, however, between costs borne by those directly

involved in the crashes and costs that are absorbed by the rest of society. Costs paid out of federal or state

revenues are funded by taxes from the general public. Similarly, costs borne by private insurance companies are funded by insurance premiums paid by policyholders, most of whom are not involved in crashes.

Even unpaid charges, which are absorbed by health care providers are ultimately translated into higher

costs that are borne by a smaller segment of the general public – users of health care facilities. From this

perspective, perhaps the most significant point from Table 23 is that society at large picks up nearly 3⁄4 of

all crash costs that are incurred by individual motor vehicle crash victims.

Table 23

Estimated Source of Payment by Cost Category

2000 Motor Vehicle Crash Costs

(Millions of 2000$)

Total

Federal State Government Insurer Other Self Total

Medical $4,698 $3,187 $7,885 $17,893 $2,075 $4,769 $32,622

Emergency Services $56 $1,100 $1,157 $214 $25 $57 $1,453

Market Productivity $9,881 $1,866 $11,747 $25,061 $945 $23,238 $60,991

HH Productivity $8,280 $312 $11,559 $20,151

Insurance Admin $135 $77 $212 $14,955 $15,167

Workplace Costs $4,472 $4,472

Legal/Court $11,118 $11,118

Travel Delay $25,560 $25,560

Property Damage $38,373 $20,663 $59,036

Total $14,769 $6,231 $21,000 $115,894 $33,388 $60,285 $230,568

% Total 6.41% 2.70% 9.11% 50.26% 14.48% 26.15% 100.00%
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Appendix A

Comprehensive Costs

The costs examined in the body of this report are the economic costs that result from goods and services

that must be purchased or productivity that is lost as a result of motor vehicle crashes. They do not represent the intangible consequences of these events to individuals and families, such as pain and suffering and

loss of life. Measurement of the dollar value of those consequences has been undertaken through numerous

studies. These studies have estimated values based on wages for high-risk occupations and purchases of

safety improvement products, along with other measurement techniques. These “willingness-to-pay” costs

can be an order of magnitude higher than the economic costs of injuries. Currently, most authors seem to

agree that the value of fatal risk reduction lies in the range of $2-7 million per life saved.

An estimate of “comprehensive costs,” which combines both economic costs and values for “intangible”

consequences, was made by estimating quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) lost. A QALY is a health outcome

measure that assigns a value of 1 to a year of perfect health and 0 to death (See Gold et al., 1996). QALY

loss is determined by the duration and severity of the health problem. To compute it, the diagnosis and

age-group specific estimates from Miller et al. (1995) of the fraction of perfect health lost during each

year that a victim is recovering from a health problem or living with a residual disability were used.

Figure A-1

Distribution of Comprehensive Costs
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62 U.S. Department of Transportation

Each impairment fraction was estimated by body part, AIS-85, and fracture/dislocation. The resulting

estimates in AIS-85 were applied to NHDS and NHIS cases and the respective AIS-90 estimates were

computed. QALY losses in future years are discounted to present value using a 4 percent discount rate.

These estimates, expressed in 2000 economics, are summarized in Table A-1. The total Comprehensive

cost for a fatality is approximately $3.4 Million. Most of this is due to lost life years and lost productivity.

The portion of comprehensive costs that is represented by economic costs decreases as the severity of

injuries rises (see figure A-1). This reflects the relatively small values of lost quality of life found for less

severe injuries.

The relative value of fatalities and non-fatal injuries is useful for conducting cost-effectiveness analysis.

These values are used to express nonfatal injuries as fatality equivalents in order to calculate a cost per

equivalent fatality. In some instances, the countermeasure being examined will only impact costs associated with injuries. This would be the case for countermeasures aimed at protecting occupants in the event

a crash occurs. If the countermeasure influences the prevalence of the crash itself, then all costs would be

relevant to the analysis. Comprehensive ratios for both scenarios are provided in Table A-1.

Table A-1

Summary of Unit Costs, 2000

2000 Dollars

PDO MAIS 0 MAIS 1 MAIS 2 MAIS 3 MAIS 4 MAIS 5 Fatal

INJURY COMPONENTS

Medical $0 $1 $2,380 $15,625 $46,495 $131,306 $332,457 $22,095

Emergency Services $31 $22 $97 $212 $368 $830 $852 $833

Market Productivity $0 $0 $1,749 $25,017 $71,454 $106,439 $438,705 $595,358

HH Productivity $47 $33 $572 $7,322 $21,075 $28,009 $149,308 $191,541

Insurance Admin. $116 $80 $741 $6,909 $18,893 $32,335 $68,197 $37,120

Workplace Cost $51 $34 $252 $1,953 $4,266 $4,698 $8,191 $8,702

Legal Costs $0 $0 $150 $4,981 $15,808 $33,685 $79,856 $102,138

Subtotal $245 $170 $5,941 $62,020 $178,358 $337,301 $1,077,567 $957,787

NON-INJURY COMPONENTS

Travel Delay $803 $773 $777 $846 $940 $999 $9,148 $9,148

Property Damage $1,484 $1,019 $3,844 $3,954 $6,799 $9,833 $9,446 $10,273

Subtotal $2,287 $1,792 $4,621 $4,800 $7,739 $10,832 $18,594 $19,421

Total $2,532 $1,962 $10,562 $66,820 $186,097 $348,133 $1,096,161 $977,208

QALYs $0 $0 $4,455 $91,137 $128,107 $383,446 $1,306,836 $2,389,179

Comprehensive $0 $0 $15,017 $157,958 $314,204 $731,580 $2,402,997 $3,366,388

Total Comprehensive ratio/Fatal 0.45% 4.69% 9.33% 21.73% 71.38% 100.00%

Injury Component ratio/Fatal 0.31% 4.58% 9.16% 21.53% 71.24% 100.00%

Note: Unit costs are on a per-person basis for all injury levels. PDO costs are on a per damaged vehicle basis.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Appendix B

Psychic Morbidity Resulting

from Motor Vehicle Injuries

Summary

An extensive literature review shows that a significant number of people experience mental disorders as a

result of being involved in a motor vehicle crash. A preliminary estimate of the incidence of these disorders,

believed to be a conservative lower bound, is that at least 31,000 people have post traumatic stress

symptoms at one year post injury and at least 62,000 people have major depressive symptoms at one year

post injury, with some unknown overlap of these two populations. There is evidence that the actual incidence

is likely to be much higher. The literature also reports that a portion of the persons with these conditions at

one-year post injury continue to have them for some time in the future, and there is an additional number

of people not injured or not involved in the crash who also experience some of the same disorders.

Introduction

In addition to the possibility of physical injury as the result of a motor vehicle crash behavioral or emotional changes can occur when a person experiences a motor vehicle crash. These emotional experiences

can be feelings of terror, helplessness or fear of dying. These feelings can result in a psychological reaction

that can have a major impact on a person’s life, independent and separate from the physical outcome of the

injury. An exploratory study was undertaken in order to begin to quantify these effects. An extensive review

of the literature, primarily based on a MEDLINE search for the period 1990 to 2000, resulted in a number

of citations of prospective clinical studies of mental conditions following injury, many specifically focused

on motor vehicle injuries. The results of the literature review show definite patterns of incidence over time

for two conditions, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Major Depressive Episode (MDE). Coupling

these data with appropriate injury incidence data results in a national level estimate of the lower bound of

the incidence of these two mental disorders.
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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Related Disorders

Definition

The fact that people experience psychological stress after being exposed to traumatic situations has

been known for some time. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) first officially recognized PTSD

as a mental disorder in 1981 when it was included in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical

Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM III. This was largely in response to veterans groups who wanted

recognition that what had been called “post-Vietnam syndrome” was a real disorder (Helzer et al 1987).

In the definition the APA recognized that combat trauma was not the only potential cause of these

symptoms.

One of the difficulties in interpreting the literature concerning PTSD is the proliferation of definitions and

the instruments used to diagnose the condition. The practical significance of this is that the estimates of

incidence developed at different times and using different instruments are not fully comparable, as they

depend on which definition or instrument was used in the diagnosis.

Although the formal definition of PTSD has changed since 1981 the broad outline has remained the same,

including four clusters of symptoms: re-experiencing, where the person recalls the traumatic situation;

avoidance, where the person attempts to minimize exposure to the stimuli that evoke the re-experiencing;

numbing, where the person exhibits inability to care for others; and hyperarousal, where the person

experiences sleep disturbance, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilance

and an exaggerated startle response (Davidson 2000). In all cases the person had to experience a

traumatic event such as injury or assault. The current definition of PTSD requires the symptoms to last for

at least one month. Acute PTSD is defined as having symptoms for less than 3 months, chronic PTSD is

defined as having symptoms for more than 3 months, and delayed onset PTSD is defined as having the

onset of the symptoms at least 6 months after the stressing event

Although not part of the formal definition of PTSD in DSM, the literature also describes instances where

some but not all of the conditions in the definition of PTSD are met. These are variously identified as

subsyndormal PTSD, partial PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Post Traumatic Stress Symptoms. In

addition, Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) was added to the definitions of mental disorders in DSM-IV (Barton

et al. 1996). It is a similar condition to PTSD, in the sense that it is the result of experiencing a traumatic

event, but by definition it lasts for a maximum of 4 weeks and occurs within 4 weeks of the trauma. If the

symptoms of ASD continue after 4 weeks, it can then be determined whether or not the person meets the

definition of PTSD.

Prognosis

Prognosis PTSD is a very persistent condition (Davidson 2000). The prognosis for PTSD is not favorable.

“Most individuals who, shortly after trauma, express symptoms of PTSD recover within a year,” but “those

who remain ill for one year rarely recover completely” (Freedman et al. 1999). Similarly, based on a

random survey of 2,493 persons, “in about one third (of people with PTSD) symptoms persisted for more
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than three years” (Helzer et al. 1987), and in another national survey of 5,877 people, “more than one

third of people” with PTSD “fail to recover even after many years” (Kessler et al. 1995). An interesting

result of a small non-random sample showed that the rate of remission was the same whether or not

people received treatment (Blanchard et al. 1997).

Prevalence in the Overall Population

Estimates of the prevalence of PTSD in the general population vary widely, as summarized in the table

below. The first listed estimated was cited as “the best epidemiologic study of PTSD in the general

American population,” (Blanchard et al. 1998).

Prevalence of PTSD in the U.S. Population

There is considerable evidence that females may be more likely to develop PTSD than males (Merikangas

KR and Weissman MM. 1986, Blanchard et al. 1995, Blanchard et al. 1996, Fommberger et al.1998, Malt

1988, Davidson 2000, among others), but this is disputed as possibly being an artifact of the data collection

methods (Blaszczynski et al. 1998) or that females are more likely to report symptoms (Malt 1988).

Prevalence Estimate, Percent Author Year

7.8 Kessler et al. 1995

.5 for men, 1.3 for women Helzer et al. 1987

1 Davis and Breslau 1994

9 Davis and Breslau 1994

1.3 Davidson 2000

6.2 Davidson 2000

Some authors suggest that the incidence of PTSD following motor vehicle injury does not appear to be a

function of chronological age (Blanchard et al. 1995), even for children (Mirza et al. 1998), but there is not

general agreement on this point.

Results

The relevant data on PTSD incidence following motor vehicle crash related injuries as reported in the

literature are plotted in Figure 1. In this figure, Series 1 represents data relevant to injured persons

treated at a trauma center and Series 2 represents data relevant to injured persons treated at an emergency department. The figure is labeled “Post Traumatic Stress” to indicate that not all of the points would

meet the current formal definition of PTSD as shown in DSM-IV, but that they were judged to exhibit the

appropriate symptoms at the time the data were developed. Note that these data represent the portion of

the initial study population diagnosed with PTSD at the time of diagnosis. Some patients not showing

symptoms of PTSD at the beginning of the study begin to exhibit them at later times. In other words, the

population is somewhat dynamic, with some people having remission of their symptoms and other people

beginning to exhibit them. Two relevant data points are not included in Figure 1. One of these indicates

5 percent of the initial population with PTSD at 5 years post injury and was not included in order to
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66 U.S. Department of Transportation

focus on the one-year post injury time period. The other indicates 93 percent of the patient population

with PTSD at 3 weeks post injury. This point was excluded because the current definition of PTSD

requires symptoms to continue for at least a month before the condition can be considered PTSD. Also

not shown is a report of the prevalence of PTSD in a series of patients of mixed severity seen in an

English hospital emergency department (Mayou et al. 1997). That study reported that PTSD symptoms

affected approximately 10 percent of the study population from 3 months to 5 years.

Although there is considerable scatter in the data shown in Figure B-1, the visual impression of these

data is that about 40 percent of those persons treated at a trauma center, presumably on average more

seriously injured, and about 20 percent of those treated at an emergency department would be

experiencing post traumatic stress.

Depression

Major Depressive Episode (MDE) is a condition within the category of mood disorders in DSM-IV. Similar to

the situation with PTSD, diagnostic criteria for MDE have evolved over the years. In general the diagnostic

criteria require the person to have depressed mood, or loss of interest or diminished ability to derive

pleasure from everyday activities plus some mix of other symptoms such as change in weight, sleeplessness, etc. Some of the symptoms overlap with those of PTSD, but these are two different conditions even

though they may occur simultaneously.

Figure B-1

Incidence of Post Traumatic Stress
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Untreated, symptoms of depression may last 6 months or longer. Although complete remission is common,

20 to 30 percent of the people experience some of the symptoms for months or years. About 5 to 10 percent

of the people diagnosed with this disorder can experience the full set of symptoms for 2 years or more.

(American Psychiatric Association 1994).

The available data on the incidence of depression in the motor vehicle injured population are shown in

Figure B-2. The same definitions apply as in Figure 1. Here too there is considerable scatter in the data,

with a hint of a “U” shaped time relationship in the trauma center related data. Visually, it appears that

about 40 percent of the motor vehicle injured population treated at a trauma center would be expected to

be experiencing depression one year after the injury. There are insufficient data relevant to emergency

department treated injury victims to draw any conclusions. Not shown is the result of a five-year post

injury assessment of depression and anxiety disorders in a population that included 67 percent motor

vehicle injuries. In that population 11 percent had a pure anxiety disorder, 12 percent had a pure depression disorder, 15 percent had a mix of anxiety and depression disorders and an additional 5 percent had

sub-clinical mood disorder five years post injury (Piccinelli et al. 1999).

Figure B-2

Incidence of Depression
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68 U.S. Department of Transportation

Injury Data

Estimates of the number of people treated in emergency departments and trauma centers as the result

of a motor vehicle injury were developed to provide a basis for applying the percentage values derived

from the case studies to the national level.

NCHS data (National Center for Health Statistics web site) show 4,259,000 people injured in motor

vehicle crashes treated in an emergency department in the U. S. in 1998. The data shown in this report

suggest that this number may be low. Rounding the estimates in Table 3 to two significant figures, there

were over 2.5 million people experiencing MAIS 0 injuries, nearly 4.7 million experiencing MAIS 1

injuries, nearly 440,000 people experiencing MAIS 2 injuries, nearly 130,000 people experiencing

MAIS 3 injuries, more than 36,000 people experiencing MAIS 4 injuries and nearly 9,500 people

experiencing MAIS 5 injuries. It is known that some people with MAIS 0 injuries are taken to emergency departments (Luchter 1995) and presumably most people with MAIS 1 and 2 injuries would likely

visit an emergency department. Since the NCHS data are based on emergency department visits and the

NASS data are based on the number of crashes with follow-up to determine injury levels from hospital

records, the NCHS estimate will be used as the more conservative estimate.

There are no comparable national level data showing the number of people injured in motor vehicle

crashes treated in trauma centers. Here there is no choice but to estimate the number of people treated

at that level based on the NASS data. Although people receiving injuries at the MAIS 3 or greater level

would likely benefit from being treated in a trauma center one cannot assume that all of them would

receive that level of care. Arbitrarily assuming that 90 percent of those injured in motor vehicle

crashes are treated at a trauma center, the data in Table 3 suggest that 155,000 people are treated in

trauma centers in the U.S. each year as the result of motor vehicle injuries.

Incidence of PTSD and MDE

It is not possible to develop definitive estimates of the incidence of PTSD and MDE following motor vehicle

crashes based on the available data. However, it does appear possible to estimate a reasonably conservative

lower bound of the possible range. The data suggest that between 10 and 30 percent of the people treated

in an emergency department as the result of a motor vehicle injury experience PTSD at one year post

injury, and for those treated at trauma centers the range appears to be between about 20 to 40 percent.

Using the emergency department incidence of 4,259,000 cited above, between .4 and 1.3 million people

injured in motor vehicle crashes would be suffering form PTSD one-year post injury. Using the 155,000

estimate of people treated in a trauma center 31,000 and 62,000 people would be suffering from PTSD

one year post injury. This results is a broad range of between 31,000 and 1.3 million.

There is only one report of MDE following treatment for a motor vehicle crash in the emergency department, and thus no attempt is made to develop a definitive estimate for that population. For persons treated

in a trauma center, the percentage with MDE at one-year post injury appears to be in the 40 to 50 percent

range or 62,000 to 78,000 based on the estimated 155,000 cited in the prior paragraph.
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Discussion

An extensive review of the literature revealed several case studies of people injured in motor vehicle

crashes who were diagnosed with symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress at some time after the

injury. Specifically, three reports of the incidence of PTSD in patients treated at trauma centers and five

reports on the incidence of PTSD in patients treated in emergency departments were found. In addition,

three reports on the incidence of MDE for patients treated in trauma centers and one for patients treated

in an emergency department were found. There is considerable scatter in these data. Applying the percentage of person treated in these facilities who were diagnosed to have these disorders at one year post injury

to an estimate of the national level of the total number of persons receiving that level of treatment for

motor vehicle injuries results in lower bound estimates of the national level incidence. On that basis, at

least 31,000 people who had been injured in a motor vehicle crash are experiencing the symptoms of PTSD

one year post injury, and 62,000 people are experiencing the symptoms of MDE. There is evidence that for

some of these people, the symptoms would continue for some time. For example, the American Psychiatric

Association indicates that about 5 to 10 percent of the people diagnosed with MDE can experience the full

set of symptoms for 2 years or more, Mayou et al. (1997) cites 10 percent of an English population

treated in an emergency department having PTSD symptoms at 5 years, and Piccinelli et al. (1999)

shows more than 25 percent of the persons diagnosed with these disorders were still experiencing they

at 5 years post injury.

Assuming that the average injury severity is lower for people treated at an emergency department than

those treated at a trauma center, the data suggest a relationship between injury severity and either posttraumatic stress or major depression. This is in agreement with some authors (Holbrook et al. 1994,

Fommberger 1998) but counter to some others (Koren et al. 1999). Age does not appear to be a major

factor but sex does, with females reported to have a higher incidence. Prior history of mental disorders

also does appear to be more frequent in persons diagnosed with depression or posttraumatic stress.

The results reported here should be considered as a preliminary estimate only as there are several

limitations in the available data and the method by which they have been combined. The case reports are

based on different populations from different geographical areas and there is little consistency in the

diagnostic instruments used. However, there is some likelihood that the estimates are low for two reasons:

the reports in the literature only relate to people who were injured sufficiently to seek medical care, and

as far as could be ascertained from the literature, all of the case studies included in the results reported

here excluded persons with head injuries. It is frequently the case that persons with head injuries experience a variety of behavioral problems. Also, it is known that persons not directly involved in the crash

often suffer symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress (Lehman et al.1987, Harris et al.1989).

Neither of these categories is included in the estimated incidence. Whatever the incidence value is at

present, at least one author suggests that the problem is likely to increase as the survival rates of motor

vehicle crashes increases (Blaszczynski et al.1998).
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

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Appendix C

Functional Losses Resulting from

Motor Vehicle Crashes

Introduction

When an injury occurs, not only is the injured person affected, but families and society as a whole

experience economic, functional and behavioral impacts as well. Methods for estimating the economic

consequences resulting from injury are the most highly developed, and have been applied in the body of this

report. There is a growing realization, however, that economics do not tell the entire story –real people

experience long-term health consequences that affect their lives in a very direct way. This Appendix

considers the functional limitations resulting from motor vehicle injuries. Appendix B discusses the

current state of knowledge of behavioral outcomes of motor vehicle injuries.

The Functional Capacity Index (FCI), has been developed by NHTSA as an approach to quantifying the

long term changes in a person’s ability to function in daily living1, 2. Based on Multi-Attribute Utility Theory,

the Index considers each year of life to be intrinsically valuable, regardless of the earning capacity of the

individual. The FCI classifies normal adult function into ten domains (eating, excretory, sexual, ambulation,

hand and arm, bending and lifting, visual, auditory, speech and cognitive) and assigns a value between

0 and 1 to each domain to indicate the predicted reduction in function resulting from a specific injury.

A value of 0 denotes no loss of function and a 1 value denotes complete loss of function in that domain.

For each domain, discrete levels of function were described. An expert panel predicted the expected level

of function at one year post injury in each of the ten domains for every injury listed in the 1990 Abbreviated Injury Scale3

. A convenience sample representing of a cross section of society performed exercises

from which were derived a relative value for each domain and each level of function. An algorithm was

developed for combining these values into an overall FCI value for each injury. Initial clinical validation

studies2, 4 confirm that the Index indeed does measure functional outcome and have identified areas for

further improvement. FCI values assigned to the most severe functional levels of each of the ten domains

are shown in Table C-1 and FCI values for some typical injuries are shown in Table C-2.
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Table C-1

FCI Values for the Most Severe Levels of Each Domain

Total Hearing Loss 0.35

Total Blindness 0.41

No Sexual Function 0.46

Cannot Bend or Lift 0.49

Completely Dependent Ambulation 0.67

Severe Difficulty Speaking 0.68

Severe Incontinence 0.74

Tube Feeding Required 0.75

Complete/Near Paralysis, Two Upper Limbs 0.75

Complete Cognitive Dependence 1.00

Table C-2

FCI Values for Typical Injuries

Most Minor Injuries 0.00

Bilateral Lung Contusion 0.14

Most femur fractures 0.14

Eye Injury NFS 0.21

Pancreas Avulsion 0.29

Degloving Injury, Arm 0.41

Sciatic Nerve, Complete laceration 0.54

Unconscious > 24 hours 0.86

Cervical spine complete cord syndrome 0.98

The FCI by itself provides a relative measure of the long-term outcome of an injury. For example, an injury

with an FCI value of 0.6 means that a person with that injury has their functional capacity reduced by 60

percent compared to that of a fully functioning person. Multiplying the FCI value by a person’s life expectancy results in a measure called Life-years Lost to Injury (LLI), a measure of the life-long effect of the

injury. Changes in the FCI with time can be taken into account, as can the possibility that certain injuries

result in reduced life expectancy. If the LLI values are aggregated over an injured population, an indication

of the relative effect particular injuries have on society can be estimated.
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FCI and Crash Related Injuries

The FCI was applied to data from the National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System

(NASS CDS) for the years 1993-19945

. The sample included surviving crash occupants with at least one

injury for whom demographic data were available. FCI values were assigned to the most severe injury

within each body region. LLI were computed based on the age and gender of the injured occupants.

Ninety-three percent of the crash related injuries were not associated with any predicted loss of function

(FCI = 0). Approximately 105,000 persons injured in motor vehicle crashes experience some loss of

function at one year post injury; nearly half of these persons were affected in only one dimension. More

than 10% experienced decrements in cognitive functioning. Among the 20 most frequently occurring

injuries that result in functional limitations, 95% are injuries to the extremities. These injuries accounted

for 78% of all LLI.

Other Applications of the FCI

The FCI has recently been used in cost effectiveness studies of motor vehicle injuries6, 7 as well as is

assessments of other types of injury8, 9. In studies of air bag effectiveness6, 7, the FCI was used to account

for diminished health-related quality of life resulting from motor vehicle crashes. Based on findings from

these studies, it was demonstrated that cost-effectiveness ratios for air bags are comparable to other wellaccepted measures in preventive medicine; the authors also estimated benefits of properly restraining

children in the rear seat of air bag equipped vehicles.

References

1 MacKenzie EJ, Damiano AM, Miller TR, Luchter S. Development of the Functional Capacity Index (FCI). National

Highway Traffic Safety Administration. DOT HS 808 160; 1994.

2 MacKenzie EJ, Damiano AM, Miller TR, Luchter S. The development of the Functional Capacity Index. J Trauma

1996; 41(5)799-807.

3 Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine: The Abbreviated Injury Scale, 1990 Revision, Des Plaines,

Illinois.

4 Mackenzie EJ, Sacco WJ, Luchter S, Ditunno JF, Forrester-Staz, C, Gruen GS, Marion DW, Schwab WC: Validating the

Functional Capacity Index as a measure of outcome following blunt multiple trauma. J Trauma 2002; in press.

5 Segui-Gomez M: Application of the Functional Capacity Index to NASS CDS Data. National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration DOT HS 808 492, 1996.

6 Graham JD, Thompson KM, Goldie SJ, Segui-Gomez M, Weinstein MC: The cost-effectiveness of air bags by seating

position. JAMA 1997; 278(17):1418-1425.

7 Segui-Gomez M: Driver air bag effectiveness by severity of the crash. Am J Public Health 2000; 90(10):1575-1581.

8 Hemingway D, Segui-Gomez M:The cost effectiveness of home and recreational injury prevention. Final Report.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention R49/CCR115279-02-1, 2001.

9 Segui-Gomez M, Keuffel E, Frick KD: Cost and effectiveness of hip protectors among the elderly. IJHTA 2002, in press.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Appendix D

Definitions of Economic Costs

Medical Costs

The cost of all medical treatment associated with motor vehicle injuries including that given during

ambulance transport. Medical costs include emergency room and inpatient costs, follow-up visits, physical

therapy, rehabilitation, prescriptions, prosthetic devices, and home modifications.

Emergency Services

Police and fire department response costs

Vocational Rehabilitation

The cost of job or career retraining required as a result of disability caused by motor vehicle injuries

Market Productivity

The present discounted value (using a 4 percent discount rate for 2000 dollars) of the lost wages and

benefits over the victim’s remaining life span.

Household Productivity

The present value of lost productive household activity, valued at the market price for hiring a person to

accomplish the same tasks.

Insurance Administration

The administrative costs associated with processing insurance claims resulting from motor vehicle crashes

and defense attorney costs.

Workplace Costs

The costs of workplace disruption that is due to the loss or absence of an employee. This includes the cost

of retraining new employees, overtime required to accomplish work of the injured employee, and the

administrative costs of processing personnel changes.

Legal Costs

The legal fees and court costs associated with civil litigation resulting from traffic crashes.
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Travel Delay

The value of travel time delay for persons who are not involved in traffic crashes, but who are delayed in

the resulting traffic congestion from these crashes.

Property Damage

The value of vehicles, cargo, roadways and other items damaged in traffic crashes.

Psychosocial Impacts

Psychological or emotional trauma resulting from a motor vehicle crash that inhibits, limits, or otherwise

negatively influences a person’s life.

Functional Capacity Index

An approach to quantifying the long-term changes in a person’s ability to function in daily living, expressed

as a proportion of complete whole body functioning.
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Appendix E

Discount Rates

When a person is disabled or killed in a motor vehicle crash, the victim’s future productive contribution

to society is reduced or eliminated. In addition, they may incur ongoing medical or rehabilitation costs

throughout much of the remainder of their life. Because these losses occur in a future time period, they are

not directly comparable to costs that occur in the year of the crash, and they must be adjusted to reflect

society’s preference for current consumption or investment opportunities. This adjustment is accomplished

through the process known as discounting.

Discounting reflects the fact that a dollar invested today can earn a real (net of inflation) rate of return that

would result in more than a dollar’s purchasing power in a future year. Although economists are in general

agreement that discounting should take place, there is considerable controversy regarding which rate to use.

There is general agreement within the economic community that the appropriate basis for determining

discount rates is the marginal opportunity cost of lost or displaced funds. When these funds involve capital

investment, the marginal, real rate of return on capital must be considered. However, when these funds

represent lost consumption, the appropriate measure is the rate at which society is willing to trade off

future for current consumption. This is referred to as the “social rate of time preference,” and it is

generally assumed that the consumption rate of interest, i.e. the real, after-tax rate of return on widely

available savings instruments or investment opportunities, is the appropriate measure of its value.

The production that is lost by individual crash victims, as well as the medical and other costs that must be

incurred in an attempt to restore them to their pre-crash physical and material status, are a measure of

the consumption that is lost (or diverted to no-net-gain uses) to the injured parties and their dependents.

It could be argued that the portion of these lost earnings that are invested rather than consumed represent

foregone capital investment and should be discounted at a rate that reflects the opportunity cost of capital.

However, savings rates are extremely low in the United States. In the latter part of the 1990’s into 2000,

the savings rate has been a negative rate of disposable personal income. As a practical matter, therefore,

foregone consumption is the dominant consideration in establishing a discount rate for crash costs, and the

social rate of time preference is the appropriate measure.
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Estimates of the social rate of time preference have been made by a number of authors. Robert Lind (1982)

estimated that it is between zero and six percent, reflecting the rates of return on Treasury bills and stock

market portfolios. More recently, Kolb and Sheraga (1991) put the rate at between one and five percent,

based on returns to stocks and three-month Treasury bills. Moore and Viscusi (1990) calculated a two

percent real rate of time preference for health, characterized as being consistent with financial market

rates for the period covered by their study.

This analysis will be based on a 4% discount rate. This rate was selected because most long-term cumulative rates of return on stocks cluster around that number. Investors appear to prefer the higher, riskier

returns from stocks to the more conservative Treasury Bills by a significant margin. Four percent is a fairly

conservative choice within the estimate range that has been derived from the analysis described in this

Appendix and other analyses. See Blincoe 1996 for a more complete presentation of this issue.
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Appendix F

Detailed Methodology for Selected

Human Capital Unit Cost Estimates

Legal Costs

Legal costs include the legal fees and court costs associated with civil litigation resulting from motor

vehicle crashes. Legal costs were calculated with the following formula:

LC= (Medical+Wage+Household)*Pwl*58%*29%*1.492*24.9%

if MAIS=1

LC= (Medical+Wage+Household)*Plw*58%*29%*1.492*55%

if MAIS in [2,5] and (Medical+Wage+Household)<$740,000

LC= $740,000*Plw*58%*29%*1.492*55%

if (Medical+Wage+Household)>$740,000 or MAIS=6

LC ................... legal costs

Medical ........... medical costs

Wage ............... lost wages

Household ....... lost household productivity

Plw ................. probability of losing work, estimated by MAIS, body part, and fracture/dislocation diagnosis

from the NASS/CDS file;

58% ................ percentage of claimers who hired an attorney (Hensler et al., 1991);

29% ................ estimated plaintiff’s attorney fees, as an average percentage of losses recovered

(Hensler et al., 1991; AIRAC, 1988);

1.492 .............. ratio of total legal costs (excluding defense attorney fees) over plaintiff’s attorney fees

(Kakalik and Pace,1986);

24.9% ............. percentage of motor vehicle crash victims with MAIS=1 and work loss who claim (Hensler

et al., 1991); and

55% ................ percentage of motor vehicle crash victims with MAIS in [2,5] and work loss who claim

(Hensler et al., 1991); and

$740,000 ........ limit on average court awards for catastrophic injuries (Hensler et al., 1991).
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In estimating probabilities of losing work, by MAIS, body part, and fracture/dislocation diagnosis from the

NASS/CDS file, a procedure similar to the procedure for estimating medical costs was used to fill cells for

which no information on the workdays lost was available.

Insurance Administration Costs

Insurance administration costs include the administrative costs associated with processing insurance

claims resulting from motor vehicle crashes and defense attorney fees.

Insurance administrative costs were calculated with the following formula:

When MAIS=1 then:

IA= 7.46%*Medical + 24.9%*18.3%*Pwl*(Wage+Household) + 3.24%*Wage

+ 1.67%*(Wage+Household) + 3.61%*(Wage+household) + 1.76%*Wage

+ 7.85%*PropDamage

When MAIS in [2,5] and (Wage+Household)<=$148,000 then:

IA= 7.46%*Medical + 55%*18.3%*Pwl*(Wage+Household) + 3.24%*Wage

+ 1.67%*(Wage+Household) + 3.61%*(Wage+household) + 1.76%*Wage

+ 7.85%*PropDamage

When (Wage+Household)>$148,000 then:

IA= 7.46%*Medical + 55%*18.3%*Pwl*($148,000) + 3.24%*Wage

+ 1.67%*($148,000) + 3.61%*($148,000) + 1.76%*Wage

+ 7.85%*PropDamage

When MAIS=6 then:

IA= 7.46%*Medical + 55%*18.3%*($148,000) + 9%*($54,800) + 7.85%*PropDamage

Legend

7.46%*Medical ...................................... the insurance administrative costs related to

medical expenses claims;

24.9%*18.3%*Pwl*(Wage+Household) . the insurance administrative costs related to liability claims;

3.24%*Wage ........................................... the insurance administrative costs related to disability insurance;

1.67%*(Wage+Household) the insurance administrative costs

related to Workman’s Compensation;

 3.61%*(Wage+household) ..................... the administrative costs related welfare payments;

 1.76%*Wage.......................................... the administrative costs related to seek leave;

7.85%*PropDamage ............................... the insurance administrative costs related to property damages;

9%*($54,800) ........................................ the insurance administrative costs related to life insurance; and

148,000 .................................................. the average policy limit on liability claims.

The formula’s coefficients came from Miller, Viner, et al., (1991).
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Appendix G

Hours of Delay per Heavy Vehicle Crash

by Roadway Class, Location, and Severity

Road Class/Location PDO Injury Fatal

URBAN

Interstate 2260 7344 21749

Other Freeway 1766 5737 16990

Major Arterial 949 3082 9127

Minor Arterial 594 1929 5711

Collector 31 102 301

Local Street 9 28 83

RURAL

Interstate 814 2646 7835

Major Arterial 416 1350 3999

Major Arterial 255 829 2454

Major Collector 10 34 100

Major Collector 4 14 42

Local Street 1 4 12

Note: Delay on local streets includes vehicles unable to exit from driveways as

planned and therefore not in operation. Each hour of delay is valued at

$13.86 in urban areas and $16.49 in rural areas. The cost differential is due

to the differences in vehicle occupancy.
The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000

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Appendix H

Nonfatal Injury Unit Cost By Body Region, 2000$

Emergency Market Household Insurance Workplace Legal Travel Property

Medical Services Productivity Productivity Admin. Cost Costs Delay Damage Total

SCI

MAIS 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

MAIS 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

MAIS 3 355082 368 141692 47936 26596 4266 68867 944 6799 769604

MAIS 4 824887 830 227881 60870 94751 4698 106488 1003 9833 2975590

MAIS 5 1088896 852 311615 50066 115009 8191 106488 5247 9446 4032158

BRAIN

MAIS 1 30405 97 6484 2053 3488 252 1436 780 3844 66467

MAIS 2 31323 212 22371 6102 7296 1953 6113 850 3954 246660

MAIS 3 193785 368 67813 19340 29342 4266 30225 944 6799 668333

MAIS 4 206592 830 142195 36663 44003 4698 48867 1003 9833 1205085

MAIS 5 280228 852 610880 224427 72424 8191 99556 5247 9446 2700521

LOWER EXTREMITY

MAIS 1 1285 97 987 328 470 252 81 780 3844 11491

MAIS 2 8592 212 28260 9131 7355 1953 5468 850 3954 102419

MAIS 3 31258 368 97920 30368 21901 4266 16359 944 6799 276057

MAIS 4 41473 830 214681 50146 36038 4698 41628 1003 9833 482811

MAIS 5 209623 852 358968 105678 56122 8191 93066 5247 9446 823972

UPPER EXTREMITY

MAIS 1 859 97 850 252 408 252 39 780 3844 7381

MAIS 2 5490 212 20779 6652 4312 1953 2052 850 3954 46254

MAIS 3 17274 368 56689 16855 13738 4266 9698 944 6799 126631

MAIS 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

MAIS 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

TRUNK, ABDOMEN

MAIS 1 1248 97 1998 657 632 252 151 780 3844 9659

MAIS 2 11384 212 34838 8861 8542 1953 6230 850 3954 76824

MAIS 3 32692 368 53111 16166 15260 4266 13049 944 6799 142655

MAIS 4 52963 830 74723 20402 21694 4698 19919 1003 9833 206065

MAIS 5 62967 852 148817 48056 34233 8191 35581 5247 9446 353390
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Emergency Market Household Insurance Workplace Legal Travel Property

Medical Services Productivity Productivity Admin. Cost Costs Delay Damage Total

FACE/OTHER HEAD/NECK

MAIS 1 1183 97 1959 655 596 252 95 780 3844 9461

MAIS 2 12020 212 21409 5041 5819 1953 4505 850 3954 55763

MAIS 3 56149 368 55734 14502 17392 4266 16225 944 6799 172379

MAIS 4 178285 830 83313 23648 31735 4698 30946 1003 9833 364291

MAIS 5 92107 852 385159 96199 48664 8191 79152 5247 9446 725017

MINOR EXTERNAL

MAIS 1 1085 97 759 274 425 252 73 780 3844 7589

BURNS

MAIS 1 9515 97 8826 3121 2148 252 369 780 3844 28952

MAIS 2 61889 212 18847 6629 8621 1953 7283 850 3954 110238

MAIS 3 198791 368 84821 22864 32739 4266 42301 944 6799 393893

MAIS 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

MAIS 5 162046 852 203047 43221 44763 8191 56358 5247 9446 533171

UNKNOWN BODY REGION

MAIS 1 1085 97 759 274 425 252 73 780 3844 7589
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