Traffic crashes cost State billions

Almost 40,000 road crashes a year in WA are placing a costly burden on the community, with about $2 billion spent annually as a result of traffic accidents.

As well as the unquantifiable human loss, the 209 people who died on WA roads in 2008 cost the community more than $1.8 million each, or $384 million in total.

The number of people seriously injured in road accidents continues to rise and 2878 people were hospitalised after surviving crashes in 2008, costing the State $1.2 billion.

The Office of Road Safety estimated the social and economic costs of WA's road toll by calculating expenses including medical treatment, property damage, potential loss of earnings and the use of emergency services.

But executive director Iain Cameron warned the figures were conservative and did not include the costs of pain and suffering to family, friends and associated supporting services.

"You can't put a dollar sign on emotional trauma that often lasts for a lifetime," he said.

Road Safety Minister Rob Johnson described road trauma as one of the most serious social problems and said the figures justified the Government's use of speed cameras and fines.

"Many people criticise speed cameras or road traffic fines as revenue-raising but these costs make a nonsense of that claim," he said. "It's crystal clear that no Government could even come close to recouping the money they are forced to spend in trying to deal with this shocking problem every year."

Although 27 fewer people were killed on WA's roads in 2008 than the previous year, 106 more people were seriously injured in crashes and the cost of road accidents to the State rose by $121 million.

Mr Cameron said: "The untold story of these figures is the number of people seriously injured. Many people only look towards the fatality figures, because they are the most serious but it is the serious injury figures that are the most staggering".

"Serious injuries bring an enormous amount of financial and emotional stress to the victim, their families, friends and to the entire community and health system."

As WA's population grows, the rate of those killed and seriously injured in road crashes has fallen from 170 per 100,000 people in 2004 to 143 per 100,000 people in 2008.

There were 39,241 crashes in WA in 2008, almost 7000 of which were in regional areas.

A Federal Government report released yesterday revealed the 653,853 road crashes across Australia in 2006 cost the nation $18 billion, caused the deaths of 1602 people and put 31,204 people in hospital.

The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics said the social costs of road crashes amounted to 1.7 per cent of national gross domestic product in 2006. Costs that had significantly increased were workplace and household losses ($1.7 billion), insurance administration ($498 million) and medical costs ($399 million).

RAC spokesman Matt Brown said the Government needed to do more.

"It's screaming out that the Government needs to invest more money into increasing road safety because there will be both a social and economic benefit from that," he said.