Car crashes cost SA close to R143bn in 2015

Cape Town - The cost of road traffic crashes on South Africa’s roads amounted to close to R143bn in 2015, or 3.4% of GDP, said Kobus Labuschagne, chief engineer of Traffic Engineering at the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport.

Presenting on the cost of road crashes at the Southern African Transport Conference (SATC) held in Pretoria from July 10 – 13, Labuschagne said on Tuesday it is estimated that 13 591 persons died on South Africa’s roads in 2015.

In addition, 62 520 people were seriously injured and a further 202 509 slightly injured. A further 1 429 794 persons were involved in road traffic crashes without sustaining any injuries.

Labuschagne explained that using historical data, estimations are that the ratio of serious injuries to fatalities was 4.6:1 and the ratio for slight injuries to fatalities was 14.9:1 in 2015.

“Human casualty costs accounted for 69.3% of the total crash cost, while vehicle repairs accounted for 14.9% and related incident costs 15.8%,” Labuschagne said.

READ: Shift needed to combat high cost of road accidents - forum 

He lamented the cumbersome process of obtaining useable data of South African-based road traffic crashes costs and related research. Before 2016, the last cost estimation for road traffic crashes was published in 2004 by the Department of Transport.

Labuschagne said this is to a large extent indicative of the significant fragmentation that exists among the road traffic safety management fraternity in the country, plus a lack of clear leadership and associated road safety governance failures.

He believes good recording systems and databases typically contain a plethora of data elements, including the severity of crashes and the injuries sustained, as well as road user type, gender and age, dates and times, type, location and road conditions and the type of vehicle involved.

The reliability of the costing system of road traffic crashes is dependent on a consistent, credible, comprehensive, and timely crash database. This requires recording of crash data to be conducted with diligence.

“In the absence of this, strategies will have to be developed to simulate road traffic crash statistics as part of a go-forward strategy,” said Labuschagne.