Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries Costing $99 Billion a Year, or $500 per Driver

In a one-year period, the cost of medical care and productivity losses associated with injuries from motor vehicle crashes exceeded $99 billion – with the cost of direct medical care accounting for $17 billion.

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the total annual cost amounts to nearly $500 for each licensed driver in the U.S.

The study in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention found that the one-year costs of fatal and non-fatal crash-related injuries totaled $70 billion (71 percent of total costs) for people riding in motor vehicles, such as cars and light trucks, $12 billion for motorcyclists, $10 billion for pedestrians, and $5 billion for bicyclists.

CDC researchers said they used 2005 data because, at the study time, it provided the most current source of national fatal and non-fatal injury and cost data from multiple sources.

The data is for injuries only and does not include costs of vehicle or property damage.

“Every 10 seconds, someone in the United States is treated in an emergency department for crash-related injuries, and nearly 40,000 people die from these injuries each year. This study highlights the magnitude of the problem of crash-related injuries from a cost perspective, and the numbers are staggering,” said Dr. Grant Baldwin, director of CDC’s Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

The study also found:

CDC’s Injury Center supports strategies for prevention such as graduated driver licenses, child safety seats, primary seat belt laws, enhanced seat belt enforcement, motorcycle and bicycle helmet laws and sobriety checkpoints.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has details on state-specific safe driving policies and a state-by-state comparison.