Injury Outcomes and Costs for Cross-Median, Median Barrier, Median Entry, and Run-off-the-Road Crashes

摘要

Lane departure crashes (LDC) have the capability of causing very serious injuries or even death.The costs associated with LDC can be difficult to compute, which might impede future benefitcost analysis or decision-making. The objective of this research was to quantify the injuryoutcomes and develop reliable and comprehensive injury costs for median-entry crashes (MEC)and run-off-the-road crashes (ROTR) and compare with costs of cross-median crashes (CMC)and median-barrier crashes (MBC). A three-step methodology was used to quantify the crashcosts for each crash severity and type. MEC and ROTR crashes in 2006 and 2007, in addition toCMC and MBC crashes between 2001 and 2007 in Wisconsin, were identified and used in thisanalysis. The Wisconsin Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES) database providedcomprehensive injury costs based on the injury types and severities suffered by participants instudy crashes. As expected, multi-vehicle CMC result in more total injuries and more severeinjuries than single-vehicle CMC, MEC, ROTR and MBC. Costs by crash severity varysignificantly between different crash types. On average, injury crashes could cost between$115,516 for MBC and $586,933 for multi-vehicle CMC. Results indicate that using one set ofcrash costs for all crash types may bias any evaluation. Using crash specific costs can lead to amore realistic benefit-cost analysis and enable better decision-making.