U.S. Loses $99Bn a Year in Crashes

The cost of traffic accidents in the US has been calculated by the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as reaching an average of $500 for each licensed driver in the US, or nearly $99 billion each year.

The huge amount of money is not, as one would have thought, an indication of the fact that crashes are good for the economy because they support repair companies and suppliers. In fact, the money being lost each year as a result of car crashes are related to the medical care costs and productivity losses caused by the accident.

According to the study, the fact that insurance premiums and taxes keep growing brings the value to more than double the initial size, or a $230.6 billion loss.

In addition, despite currently ranking ninth in the top of the causes of deaths worldwide, car crashes are expected to climb to the fifth position by 2030, a more fierce killer than diabetes and HIV/AIDS.

The whole study may however be a bit inaccurate, the CDC admits, as it used data from 2005. Back then, the US still had an accurate sources of fatal and non-fatal injury and cost data.

"This study highlights the magnitude of the problem of crash-related injuries from a cost perspective and the numbers are staggering," Dr. Grant Baldwin, director of CDC's Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention was quoted as saying by Mercury News.

Further information about the new study can be found at the following link.