Each year, 325,000 people are injured in car crashes on the job and 5,000,000 more are injured away from the job. These crashes cost employers $11.5 billion annually. Due to the escalating costs to business and because crashes are the leading killer of workers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the state highway safety offices have placed greater emphasis on outreach to and through business and industry.

To achieve the national traffic safety goals to reduce fatalities and injuries, increase seatbelt use, reduce levels of impaired driving, the business community must be educated to get involved. The business community should be made aware of the magnitude and cost of crashes, the cost of establishing safety programs, and the economic savings associated with such programs.

There have been several studies quantifying the economic cost of crashes and savings from traffic safety programs to a particular business. However, employers in Region II (among the largest employers in the nation) have not been part of these studies. As a result, the highway safety offices in New York and New Jersey must use data and specific examples from other outside jurisdictions when developing employer-based highway safety programs. However, it can be difficult to motivate employers in New York and New Jersey to establish programs based on studies of other types of businesses.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this project was to study the economic cost of crashes to a large business in Region II in order to accomplish the following objectives:

• Provide better data to support state highway safety office problem identification, resource allocation, and countermeasure selection;

• Provide information to the business community in Region II, motivating them to partner with highway safety offices and others in the development of highway safety programs in the workplace and community; and

• Develop a report documenting these findings to help highway safety advocates attract business leaders to ongoing safety efforts.

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES

The New Jersey State Safety Council (NJSSC) identified and studied a large utility company in Region II that employed over 10,000 employees and had a fleet of over 6,360 vehicles. The NJSSC conducted the following activities for the case study:

• Hired interns from a local university to collect and analyze employer data on the economic costs of crashes, both direct and indirect, to the business community, and to support the economic and social benefits of employer-based highway safety programs. Using third-party software, the interns were able to enter data on over 150 on-the-job crashes experienced by the utility company.

The software model used by NJSSC assumes that for every incident (crash or otherwise) an employer encounters, there will be five component cost impacts for the enterprise. The software model attempts to calculate these costs.

• In June 2002, the NJSSC, NHTSA Region II, and the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety assisted with a symposium to present to the case study findings to the business community. The purpose of this symposium was to present the case study and engage the business leaders in a discussion about traffic safety, the impact on employers, and the need to work together to create employer-based safety programs.

RESULTS

The utility company concluded that it had suffered 150 collisions in 2001. The company estimated that the collisions cost $325,000 or averaged about $2,100 per collision. These figures were confined vehicle repairs and medical expenses. However, by using the software model, the estimated cost of all the cases amounted to $1.9 million, with an average cost of each crash being $9,300 in direct costs and $3,520 in indirect costs, for a total of $12,820 per crash.

The software model provided a true accounting of all the costs involved with the accidents. In one particular case, when a worker suffered a serious injury and was off the job for 77 days, the employer calculated the cost of the crash (including medical payments, workers comp and vehicle replacement) to be $58,000. In fact, the model showed this particular crash to cost the employer $337,000.