Citation

Connelly LB, Supangan R. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2006; 38(6): 1087-1093.

Affiliation

Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health (ACERH) and Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation Medicine (CONROD), The University of Queensland, Mayne Medical School, Herston, Qld 4006, Australia. (l.connelly@uq.edu.au)

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2006.04.015

PMID

16797462

Abstract

In this paper, we obtain detailed data on road traffic crash (RTC) casualties, by severity, for each of the eight state and territory jurisdictions for Australia and use these to estimate and compare the economic impact of RTCs across these regions. We show that the annual cost of RTCs in Australia, in 2003, was approximately $17b, which is approximately 2.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Importantly, though, there is remarkable intra-national variation in the incident rates of RTCs in Australia and costs range from approximately 0.62 to 3.63% of Gross State Product (GSP). The paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) it provides a detailed breakdown of estimated RTC casualties, by state and territory regions in Australia, and (ii) it presents the first sub-national breakdown of RTC costs for Australia. We trust that these contributions will assist policy-makers to understand sub-national variations in the road toll better and will encourage further research on the causes of the marked differences between RTC outcomes across the states and territories of Australia.

Language: en