Serious Injuries in Auto Crashes Cost More Than Fatal Ones
The 44-year-old scientist was driving home from work in his pickup truck. He was wearing his seat belt.
A car going in the opposite direction crossed the median, out of control, at about 50 m.p.h. (73 feet per second) and hit the pickup head-on.
Both drivers survived, but the scientist got the worst of it: severe brain damage and extensive lower-body injuries that necessitated a year of rehabilitation and generated $222,000 in medical bills within six months of the crash.
Recovering from the brain damage was especially difficult, because the injury worked subtle changes on the man’s personality and placed a severe strain on his family.
After six months at home, he was able to return to work just one day a week, under the careful supervision of his employers.
Such stories are typical of people injured in high-speed car crashes, according to researchers at the Shock-Trauma Unit in Baltimore, where a comprehensive study of highway crash injuries is being sponsored by the federal government.
Though more than 40,000 people are killed on the roads each year, the thousands of others who are severely injured put a far heavier financial burden on society.
According to a report prepared for Congress last year, automobile crashes resulted in direct costs of $12.3 billion in 1985. Total projected lifetime costs from those injuries was far greater, $48.7 billion.
Severe crashes that do not cause death carry the highest price, according to other figures cited by the Shock-Trauma researchers: $179,881 in direct treatment costs, compared to $1,471 in the average fatal crash.
“It’s the injury that’s driving that insurance bill up,” said Dr. John H. Siegel, chief of the Shock-Trauma study. “You’ve got to reduce the injuries and reduce the cost of insurance.”
According to one nationwide estimate cited in the report, just 2% of all non-fatal crashes are likely to account for 44% of lifetime medical costs from such accidents.
The injured often are young, working people of limited means. Many of the subjects of the study had no medical insurance: The costs of their treatment was borne by medical assistance programs.
Even those with good insurance coverage can use up their benefits. All of that leads Siegel to conclude that medical and insurance savings would far outweigh the cost of making safer cars.
That fact may do more to alter car design than the annual body count, he said, adding that big dollar figures have “a tremendous impact in our society--far more than death and disability.”
New vehicles now must meet federal crash test standards that are based on a head-on crash into a fixed barrier at 30 m.p.h. In addition, the government publishes 35-m.p.h. crash data on a limited number of models, strictly for consumer information.
Seat belts and shoulder belts have long been required in passenger cars. As of the 1990 model year, all cars must be equipped with passive restraints, such as air bags or automatic seat belts.
Chrysler, which has driver’s-side air bags in all its vehicles made in the United States starting with the 1990 model year, estimated that the devices cost the manufacturer $300 per vehicle.
Albert Slechter, a Chrysler Corp. regulatory expert, said the easiest way to build a more crash-resistant car is to add metal to the vehicle’s structure.
But “adding safety adds weight,” he said. “When you add weight, you lose fuel efficiency,” and cars also must meet certain federal requirements for fuel efficiency, Slechter said.
He also noted that even a simple increase in the barrier-crash standard, to 35 m.p.h., “essentially requires a total redesign of the car.”
Yet some government-sponsored research has suggested that a safer vehicle could be marketed with a moderate or nominal increase in price.
MCR Technology Inc., a Santa Barbara-based car safety research and development firm, worked under contract to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the 1970s and designed, from scratch, a car capable of passing a 50-m.p.h. crash test.
“The cost today to do the same thing would be not more than 10%,” MCR president Donald Friedman said. He said that the earlier estimate included start-up costs for adding air bags and other safety systems that are now fully developed and on the market.
