COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF A SUSTAINABLY SAFE ROAD TRAFFIC SYSTEM

About 2% of the Dutch gross domestic product is taken up by the material costs of road accidents. This amounts to more than 9.5 billion Dutch guilders (1993). When one takes into account the immaterial costs as well, the total costs to society would be even higher: more than 12 billion guilders. It has been estimated that the overall number of accidents can be brought down to about 20% of the current level, when one strictly applies the principles for a sustainably safe road traffic system, both with respect to the network as a whole, and as to the design of the roads and crossroads of that network. This would mean rebuilding a considerable part of the network, adding up to an estimated 60 billion guilders. Although this could be spent over a longer period (e.g. 30 years), and although it should be possible to cover this largely from the existing budgets for investments and maintenance, this is still a huge sum of money. On the other hand, the gains for society would be considerable as well, as the total yearly costs of road accidents would be brought down through this investment. In this presentation it is shown, using cost-benefit techniques, that for different variations of these estimates investments in a sustainably safe road traffic system are profitable from a societal point of view.