Crash Costs for Highway Safety Analysis

Highway safety benefit-cost analysis is a critical component of improving safety on roadways. Highway safety improvement projects—including those implemented through the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP)—must be economically justified such that their expected benefits exceed the costs. To determine the economic benefits of safety treatments, analysts use crash costs to quantify the impacts of crashes reduced by the safety improvement project. Additionally, crash costs are often used as part of network screening to identify the roadway locations with highest potential for safety improvement by quantifying the potential reductions in crash costs to roadway users. This guide documents a literature review and the results of a questionnaire sent to all Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Division Offices regarding crash unit costs and their application. Currently, there is no nationally recommended set of crash unit costs for use in highway safety benefit-cost analysis. States independently select, modify, and update crash unit costs from one or more sources for their highway safety analyses. The Crash Costs for Highway Safety Analysis guide describes the various sources of crash costs, current practices and crash costs used by States, critical considerations when modifying and applying crash unit costs, and an exploration of the feasibility of establishing national crash unit cost values. This guide proposes a new set of national crash unit costs for the FHWA Highway Safety Benefit-Cost Analysis Guide and Tool as well as procedures to (1) update the crash unit costs over time, and (2) adjust the crash unit costs to States based on State-specific cost of living, injury-to-crash ratios, and vehicle-to-crash ratio.

• Record URL:
  https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/hsip/docs/fhwasa17071.pdf
• Corporate Authors:

  VHB

  Vienna, VA  United States 

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Harmon, Tim
  • Bahar, Geni
  • Gross, Frank
• Publication Date: 2018-1

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Glossary; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 108p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Costs; Feasibility analysis; Highway safety; Improvements; Literature reviews; Methodology; State departments of transportation; State of the practice; Surveys; Traffic crashes; Valuation
• Identifier Terms: Highway Safety Improvement Program
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01680073
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: FHWA-SA-17-071
• Contract Numbers: DTFH61-16-D-00005
• Files: TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
• Created Date: Sep 11 2018 11:16AM