CAR CRASHES COSTING US MILLIONS

TAC tackles economic and emotional impact

CAR crashes across the Geelong region cost taxpayers up to $50 million in TAC claims over a five-year period.

Accidents in Greater Geelong resulted in 1149 injury hospitalisation claims to the Transport Accident Commission in the five years to January 2017.

More than 1000 claimants were hospitalised for up to 14 days with 137 people being in hospital for more than two weeks.

The TAC says road trauma is costing Victorians more than $6 billion annually, and up to $30 billion a year nationally.

Chief executive Joe Calafiore said the figures highlighted the economic and emotional burden of road trauma.

“While we have made great gains since the 1970s in road safety — those numbers absolutely tell you there is so much more that has to be done,” Mr Calafiore said.

An average injury claim to the TAC is $42,600, however, the lifetime cost varies greatly.

An average quadriplegia claim over a lifetime is $7.5 million, paraplegic care averages about $2.1 million and claims for amputees about $300,000.

Mr Calafiore has pleaded with drivers to think of the flow-on effects of road trauma.

“Between 2012-17 there were over 1000 serious injuries, that’s over a thousand individuals. Think of the families . . . think of the knock-on effects,” he said.

“The total cost to the taxpayer is very hard to quantify because there is the added enormous emotional cost day in and day out — especially in tight-knit communities.”

Over the same five-year period 41 people were killed on Geelong roads. The majority were men — 33 compared with eight females.

The 2016 TAC annual claims report shows two thirds of men drive more than 15,000km a year, more than double the female average.

Twenty per cent of men drive more than 30,000km, while 8 per cent of females drive that distance or more.

Mr Calafiore said increases in the number of people using the road, particularly pedestrians, posed a challenge to road authorities focused on road trauma reduction.

“The great challenge in the prevention space is that you have more pedestrians and more people on the roads. When you are speaking about thousands of people being injured a year — that is a tens of millions of dollars cost to the community,” he said.

Works on improving some of the region’s most dangerous roads will start this month. More than $40 million is being invested as part of a more than $200 million statewide.

But Mr Calafiore said that alone would not lead to a reduction in road trauma. He said a TAC study of 505 Victorians aged 18-30 found 49 per cent of young drivers would check their phone instantly if they had a message.