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Abstract
This report contains an ove~ew of the measures of accident
prevention, as we11 as an estimation of their societal costs in Sweden
in 1995. The costs are broken down by the place of where the
measure takes place, roughly following the codes of the National
Board of Health and Welfare (1989). The places are:
Transport areas
Homeareas
Labour areas
School- and institutional areas
Sportareas
Leisure areas
The total costs of accident prevention to society is estimated to be 34
billion swedish kronor (SEK) in 1995 (exchange rate is 8.57 SEK
per US dollar 15 July 1999). Broken down by place of accident, the
distribution is as in the table below. It can be established that
transport areas bear the majority of the costs (67%) and an important
cause of this is that the data are considerably better than in the other
areas. The accident prevention costs include operation as we11 as
investment costs. Much effort has been done to study the public
authorities costs in the context.
Sociefal cosls of accidenf prevenlion measures 1995.
There is much uncertainty about the results and there is no exact
definition of what a accident prevention measure really is. The most
difficult part is when a measure has several objectives. Then I have
been forced to use subjective valuations or to totally leave the cost
out of the estimation. Considering this, the societal costs will be
understated and the estimate will be at a minimum level. The
uncertainty is especially treated in a qualitative analysis, which also
confirms the weak data.
Compared to the societal costs of accidents in 1995 (excl. loss of
welfare) which was estimated to be 37 billion SEK (Sund 1997), the
costs of accident prevention is lower. However, the uncertainty in