Total costs of bicycle injuries in Norway: Correcting injury figures and indicating data needs
Introduction
Bicycle accidents and injuries are underreported in all countries (Elvik and Mysen, 1999). In Norway official accident statistics are based on police reports. The official data exclude the large majority of bicycle accidents and injuries, since many do not involve other road users (Elvik et al., 1997). Earlier evaluations of the actual total number of bicycle injuries in Norway have been based on additional data, primarily from hospitals, that also include single accidents (Alvær, 2000).
A complete and accurate recording of accidents and injuries is vital for the assessment of injury costs and the implementation of safety measures to reduce bicyclist injury risk. In addition to obtaining correct accident numbers, this registration should include data on where, when and how the accident occurred, injury severity and characteristics of the cyclist. The estimated costs of bicycle injury, based on correct data, can be weighed against health benefits from increased cycling and reduced pollution and congestion by cars (Pucher and Dijkstra, 2000, Sælensminde, 2004).
This paper provides a new assessment of bicycle accidents and injuries in Norway. The combination of official data from Statistics Norway and samples of hospital data are applied to estimate overall bicycle injuries and their costs for Norway. This assessment also includes injury severity, which is vital for the assessment of injury costs and injury risk of cycling.
The rest of the article is arranged as follows: the next section describes the under-reporting and describes a methodology for how a more correct estimation of bicycle accidents can be obtained, including injury severity, and how this can be applied for the subsequent cost estimates. The third section presents the results of the proposed methodology, where total bicycle injury costs are based on adjusted official monetary values for a given injury severity. In the fourth section the methodology and results are discussed, and this section also points ahead towards the needed quality of injury data and how these data can be applied to reduce bicycle accidents. The last section summarises the findings.
Section snippets
Recorded injuries by police/official statistics
Police data forms the basis for official records of bicycle injuries in Norway. The police are mostly involved with accidents where cyclists are struck by cars or vice versa. To a much less degree one will find in police reports cyclist having crashed with other cyclists, pedestrians or animals, and practically no record of cyclists injured due to overturns, skidding or crashing with railings or kerbstones. The underreporting is higher for slight injuries than for more serious injuries (Elvik
Recorded injuries by police/official statistics
Total officially registered bicycle injuries from 1996 to 2004, distributed by severity, are given in Table 1. The injury severity classification for road accidents applied by the police, and thus the statistical authorities and the road authorities, is slightly less detailed than the AIS applied by hospitals. Compared to the AIS it is the lower and higher injury severities that are less specified in police data. Thus “slight injuries” as given in Table 1 would comprise “minor and moderate
Discussion
Underreporting of injuries from road traffic accidents is a common problem for all transport modes, but it is most extensive for bicycling (Elvik and Vaa, 2004). This article has provided an assessment of the true extent of bicycle injuries in Norway, specified by injury severity based on AIS. Our use of hospital records versus official records represents the most accessible and applied method to assess the underreporting in police records and official statistics.
Both the small difference in
Concluding remarks
Annual economic costs of bicycle injuries in Norway were estimated to approximately €300 million, approximately half of this being costs materialising in financial accounts of private and public sectors. Applied to economic analysis these are ex ante value measures, showing negative benefits from cycling that could be compared with positive health benefits from cycling, e.g., related to facilities that increase cycling and/or prevent bicycle accidents. An improved and complete accident
Acknowledgements
The research reported was primarily funded by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. Valuable inputs from Finn Blakstad, Roger Hallgren, Bjarne Hillesund, Trine Stene and Tore Vaaje are also gratefully acknowledged, as well as the constructive comments from two anonymous referees of this journal. The usual disclaimer applies.
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