VALUATION OF SAFETY. IN: HANDBOOK OF TRANSPORT AND THE ENVIRONMENT

A responsible decision for or against any proposed public safety improvement requires a judgment as to whether or not the reduction in risk afforded by the improvement is sufficient to justify its cost of provision. Clearly, if it were possible to obtain an acceptable measure of the monetary value of safety, it would go a long way toward resolving the dilemma inherent in most safety expenditure decisions. In particular, given such a measure, it would be possible to weigh the benefits of safety improvement explicitly against other costs and benefits in the course of cost-benefit analysis of safety projects. This chapter discusses some ways that monetary values of safety improvements might be defined and estimated for economic analysis.