Action is needed from across government departments to reverse the trend of flat-lining road deaths, according to road safety charity IAM RoadSmart.
And reducing these deaths would in turn offer a large saving to the public purse.
The new report, Evaluating the costs of incidents from the public sector perspective, is the first attempt to update the formula for death and injury cost figures since the 1990’s.
It is also the first time anyone has highlighted the costs to the public sector of crashes involving some of the highest at-risk road user groups: young and mature drivers, people driving for work and motorcyclists.
The purpose of the research was to facilitate a discussion beyond the Department for Transport, with the aim of developing focused policy actions based on the savings government departments could make by prioritising road safety in their day-to-day work.
The use of casualty costs is well known and a new figure is generated every year based on a model developed in the 1990’s. In 2015 the cost of each casualty was estimated at £1.7million with the total of all incidents placed at £35 billion.