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W. Wijnen

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Doctoral thesis (2024) - W. Wijnen
Road crashes are a worldwide societal problem and they have a negative impact on welfare. This is reflected by several types of social costs that result from road crashes, including medical costs, loss of human productive capacities and damage to vehicle and other properties, as well as intangible impacts such as loss of quality of life and life years. This thesis is about this impact of road crashes on welfare and the socio-economic benefits of improving road safety. Understanding the impact of road crashes on welfare is important for evidence-based road safety policy making. It helps to justify road safety investments and to allocate resources efficiently. The thesis is aimed at critically assessing the literature and current practices for estimating the impact of road crashes and road safety measures on welfare and at improving and applying methods for estimating these impacts. A combination of different methods is used, in particular literature reviews on the social costs of road crashes and monetary valuation of preventing non-fatal injuries, a survey among experts on road crash costs in European countries, a case study on the social costs of road crashes in middle-income country (Kazakhstan) and the development of a methodology for cost-benefit analysis with novel elements with respect to non-fatal injury prevention. Estimates of the impact of road crashes on welfare are found to vary widely across countries (the equivalent of 0.4-6.0% of GDP), which is mainly explained by methodological differences. In many countries the welfare impact of road crashes is found to be underestimated due to methodological shortcomings. International harmonization of methods and developing new international guidelines for estimating the social costs of road crashes is recommended. Furthermore, the results show that non-fatal injuries constitute a major portion of the overall welfare impact of road crashes. However, they often receive insufficient attention in economic assessments of road safety. Improved methods for monetary valuation and for including non-fatal road injuries in cost-benefit analysis are presented. ...
Journal article (2021) - Wim Wijnen
Information about road crash costs is a valuable input for road safety policy making and it is essential for conducting cost-benefit analysis of road safety interventions. This paper presents a methodology for assessing the socio-economic costs of road crashes as well as an estimate of the volume of these costs in Kazakhstan. Five costs components have been taken into account: medical costs, production loss, human costs, vehicle damage and administrative costs. A hybrid methodological approach has been used, which implies that three different types of methods have been applied to capture all costs: the human capital method (production loss), willingness to pay (human costs) and restitution costs method (other components). Input data were retrieved from existing databases from a variety of road safety stakeholders and other organizations. A household survey was conducted to collect additional information, including the willingness to pay for fatal crash risk reductions. Remaining data gaps have been bridged by using data from other countries. The socio-economic costs of road crashes in Kazakhstan are estimated at $6.8 billion in 2012, which corresponds to 3.3% of GDP. Human costs account for 81% of the total costs, vehicle damage for 11% and production loss for 6%. Administrative and medical costs are relatively very small cost components. More than half of the costs is related to injuries, while fatalities account for about a third of the total costs and property damage only accounts for approximately 10%. ...
Journal article (2019) - Heike Martensen, Kevin Diependaele, Rachel Talbot, Pete Thomas, Klaus Machata, Eva Aigner Breuss, Susanne Kaiser, Thierry Hermitte, Rob Thomson, Rune Elvik, Stijn Daniels, Wouter Van den Berghe, Eleonora Papadimitriou, George Yannis, Ingrid Van Schagen, Wendy Weijermars, Wim Wijnen, Ashleigh Filtness
The European Road Safety Decision Support System (roadsafety-dss.eu) is an innovative system providing the available evidence on a broad range of road risks and possible countermeasures. This paper describes the scientific basis of the DSS. The structure underlying the DSS consists of (1) a taxonomy identifying risk factors and measures and linking them to each other, (2) a repository of studies, and (3) synopses summarizing the effects estimated in the literature for each risk factor and measure, and (4) an economic efficiency evaluation instrument (E3-calculator). The DSS is implemented in a modern web-based tool with a highly ergonomic interface, allowing users to get a quick overview or go deeper into the results of single studies according to their own needs. ...