Evaluation of road accident costs for Rwanda

Abstract

The present research on evaluation of accident cost is a novel initiative for Rwanda. The main objectives were to estimate road accident costs for Rwanda by using different methods, to compare them and hence to recommend the appropriate approach for road accident evaluation. Different methods to evaluate accident costs were reviewed. Among them two methods, i.e. Human Capital, and Willingness to Pay (WTP) methods were selected to evaluate road accident costs in Rwanda because they were commonly used as the best practices in the developed countries of the world. In order to ensure unbiased collection of data, a stratified random sampling technique was employed within 13 vehicle types. Human Capital method needs elemental cost data for all components of a road accident, on other hand for WTP method only behavior data for respondents are required. Data were collected with the help of questionnaire surveys involving 398 and 110 respondents respectively for the Human Capital and the WTP methods. According to international best practices four different types of accidents, i.e. fatal, serious injury, slight injury and material damage only accidents were evaluated and compared using both Human Capital and WTP methods. It was found out that accident costs resulting from the WTP method were significantly higher than that obtained from the Human Capital method. The accident costs for fatal, serious injury, slight injury and material damage only accidents by the WTP method were about 4, 5, 6 and 5 times higher respectively than that obtained from Human Capital method. This is analogous to the international findings on accident costs. For example, the accident costs in Singapore for fatal and serious injury in WTP method were 2 and 16 times higher than that of the Human Capital/Lost output method. Again the accident costs in Cambodia as computed from the Human Capital method were compared with the international results obtained from the WTP method. It shows that the accident costs for fatal, serious and slight injury obtained from the Human Capital method were about vii 1403.6%, 49% and 243% less than corresponding average accident costs obtained from WTP method in different developed countries of the world. This confirms the finding of this research that road accident costs obtained from the WTP method are generally higher than that of the total elemental costs of different accident cost components taken together. The Rwandan results from WTP method were compared against averages of international results after adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP) and Consumer Price Index (CPI). The fatal, serious and slight injury accidents costs of this research were about 20%, 47% and 80% higher than that of average of a number of developed countries in the world. However, the fatal accident costs for Rwanda was 36.8% lower comparing that of USA. It may be mentioned here that without adjustments for PPP and CPI, the accident costs for fatal, serious and slight injury in Rwanda were respectively 22.5% lower, 18.6% and 72.3% higher than that of the average of a number of developed countries. It is evident from the comparisons of accident costs from a number of international studies that this research has been successful in evaluating costs of different types of accidents within reasonable accuracy using both WTP and HCM methods Again, it appears from the results that there are significant differences in accident cost values obtained from the Human capital and the willingness to pay methods. It is therefore recommended to conduct a more comprehensive research involving a significantly higher number of samples to get further insights of the issue. Finally, the WTP method is recommended as the appropriate method to be used for Rwanda. This is because it represents the true societal value or wiliness to pay for accident costs. Moreover, it is relatively cheaper and less time consuming to evaluate accident costs using WTP method.