RedwoodAge.com

What kills 40,000 people a year and costs $99 billion? 

You might suspect it's war, or drug-related violence, or cancer. But the answer is vehicle accidents on America's streets and highways, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which is looking at traffic accidents from a public health perspective.

In these hard times, it's interesting that the costs of medical care and productivity losses of traffic accidents -  amount to $500 for every licensed driver. The $99 billion total includes $70 billion from cars, $12 billion from motorcycles, $10 billion from pedestrians and $5 billion from bicyclists.

"Every 10 seconds, someone in the United States is treated in an emergency department for crash-related injuries, and nearly 40,000 people die from these injuries each year," said Dr. Grant Baldwin,
director of CDC's Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. "This study highlights the magnitude of the problem of crash-related injuries from a cost
perspective, and the numbers are staggering."

While there's a lot of attention paid to elderly drivers, the problems are much broader. The truth is that 69 percent of drivers over 75 either limit their driving or stop driving on their own. For the rest, there are ways for family members to initiate conversations about when it's time to stop driving.

Young people account for only 14 percent of the US population, but 28 percent of all fatal and nonfatal accidents, and 31 percent of the related costs.

Men vs. Women
Seven out of 10 people killed in accidents were men, and they represented 74 percent of the costs associated with accidents.

Costs don't always follow the same proportions as participation in accidents because some groups are more vulnerable to injury. Motorcyclists accounted for 14 percent of costs, but only 6 percent of serious accidents. Pedestrians accounted for 10 percent of costs, but were involved in only 5 percent of accidents.

Fatal accidents led to costs of $58 billion, non-fatal injuries that led to hospital admissions cost $28 billion, and $14 billion was spent on people who were treated and released after an accident.

The CDC is focused on strategies aimed at preventing such accidents.

One strategy would allow "graduated driver licensing" so that teen drivers would get more experience in low-risk situation before being allowed to drive in higher risk situations. That approach helped reduce teen crashes by 40 percent in 16-year-old drivers.

Child safety seats could help reduce the $3.6 billion cost of injuries to children. And seat belts reduce the death rate of front-seat riders by half.

Motorcycle helmets reduce the risk of death in crashes by one-third, and cut the risk of brain injury by 69 percent. And sobriety check points reduce alcohol-related deaths by more than 20 percent.