LAKE COUNTY — Putting a dollar figure on the cost of traffic deaths was the focus of a recent national AAA study. While the specific cost per death could not be calculated for Lake County”s relatively small population, Northern California AAA spokesman Sean Comey said that was not the point.
“Nearly 43,000 people die on the nation”s roadways each year. That”s nearly five people each hour. It”s time for motor vehicle crashes to be viewed as the public health threat they are. If there were two jumbo jets crashing every week, the government would ground all planes until we fixed the problem,” Comey said.
The AAA study says the cost of traffic deaths in metropolitan areas such as the San Francisco-Oakland area is $2.7 million annually, or $658 per person. Nationally, the annual price tag is $167 billion, more than double the $67 cost calculated for traffic congestion.
“Whether we can do a comparison and say the results still apply is hard for Lake County. The reason we did this study is because we typically think about transportation in terms of immediate inconvenience ? the traffic in front of you. We seldom think in terms of the cost in injuries and lives. And while that”s important for many people ? not just the victim”s families ? it helps to enhance that by putting a dollar figure on it,” Comey said.
California Highway Patrol (CHP) statistics for the Clear Lake area show that the average number of fatal crashes in Lake County in 2005 and 2006 is 14 per year, resulting in an average of 16.5 deaths for each of the two years. Another 13 fatal crashes happened in 2007.
“We”ve come to accept that as the cost of doing business ? that there is going to be a certain number of people who consistently die year after year,” Comey said.
Statewide, the number of traffic deaths appears to have dropped slightly. In 2005, 4,304 Californians died on the roads, according to a CHP fact sheet. The number of deaths in 2006 was 107 less. Unofficial statistics show that 2,615 people died between January and August last year. CHP spokesperson Jaime Coffee said that 2007 statistics are still being recorded and will change.
Comey said applying the congestion versus traffic rule used in the study is harder for an area such as Lake County, with a population of just less than 66,000, according to a 2006 U.S. Census Bureau estimate. The smallest areas studied had between 225,000 and 650,000 people.
“In smaller areas with populations under 500,000, the cost of crashes is roughly seven times more than (the cost of) congestion. Whereas, in larger, urban areas of more than 3 million people, it”s about double the crash cost versus congestion,” Comey said.
“The patterns are consistent with what we see across the country relative to a predictable number of crashes every year. There may be a small number of lives lost and we may think we are unable to do anything about it, but we should not accept the status quo, not when lives are being lost,” Comey said.
According to Clear Lake Area CHP Commander Dane Hayward, 50 percent of the fatal traffic accidents in Lake County involve a person under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
