THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF TRAFFIC CRASHES

The purpose of this thesis is to quantify the economic costs associated with traffic crashes for 83 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States and compare those costs to that of congestion. This was done by collecting injury and fatality data for each area and multiplying those by economic cost estimates for each developed by the FHWA. The findings of this analysis show that the economic cost of traffic crashes exceeds the economic costs of congestion in every metropolitan area studied. These results indicate that transportation safety deserves similar consideration to that of traffic congestion when allocation transportation funds.