Naturally, the bulk of the discussion on road accident damages focuses on injury to human life. But along with the unbearable loss, road accidents also have an economical cost. Unlike the number of fatalities in accidents that make it to the media headlines, the discussion of the economic consequences of accidents hardly takes place outside professional circles.
A loss of 17 NIS billion a year
The economic damage of road accidents to the economy is much more difficult to quantify. This difficulty stems from the fact that many variables need to be weighted. The National Road Safety Authority recently published a study that examined the economic damage to the economy due to road accidents. This is an opportunity to dwell on the subject.
To conduct the study, The National Road Safety Authority partnered with the economic newspaper The Marker, and the consulting firm BDO, which led the study. The model chosen was the Up-Bottom method, which is based on an individual analysis of the various cost components according to the following division: body and mental damage, property damage, and economic damage due to loss of time or congestion on the roads (as a result of an accident).
The starting point was the accidents themselves. In the last three years, the average annual number of road accidents in Israel is 190,000, of which 56,000 the cases include casualties. The average yearly death toll is 343 people (and another 80,000 wounded and mentally injured).
For a country the size of Israel, these are significant numbers. On the other hand, the numbers are not new. In the current study, these numbers were the basis for the economic angle, which ultimately revealed that the Israeli economy loses NIS 17 billion a year due to road accidents.
A loss of 13 million working hours
Seventeen billion NIS constitutes 1.3% of Israel’s national product. When you spread this cake, you find that 9.5 billion NIS is directed to the treatment and compensation of about 80,000 victims each year; NIS 5.5 billion is the cost of damage to property (about 330,000 vehicles damaged in one way or another); And according to the new study, an additional 3 billion NIS goes down the drain due to the loss of work hours and other consequences for the productivity of the economy.
The last point is essential since, in the past, the Department of Transportation used to publish estimates of the economic damage of road accidents. Still, these estimates were much more conservative and lower. The reason is that the Ministry of Transport’s inspection completely ignored the negative aspect of road accidents on productivity in the economy.
To be clear. The Israeli economy loses 13 million work hours due to road accidents every year. Another statistic that emerged from the new study is that although recent years have included investment in infrastructure and technology, there has been no decline in economic harm. It turns out that the blame is not on infrastructure and technology but on another factor that has become increasingly dominant in recent years – the use of mobile devices while driving.
3.2 billion NIS a year due to cellular distractions
In contrast to previous studies, the latest study addresses this issue directly. It is not afraid to quantify the damage of cellular distractions and give an accurate answer to the question in the article’s title.
Due to cellular distractions, the Israeli economy loses about 3.2 billion NIS every year. According to the study, one in five road accidents is related to the distracting use of the phone while driving. The study authors explicitly cited cellular distractions as one of the significant factors preventing overall damage (along with a lack of bicycle infrastructure) and, of course, reducing harm to human life. For over two decades, legislators worldwide have been trying to solve this problem, but to no avail. According to surveys, despite heavy fines and sanctions against drivers and a great deal of investment in enforcement, about half of the drivers do not resist the temptation and occasionally make distracting phone use while driving.
The solution to the phenomenon should be sought elsewhere, which leads us to the technology of the Israeli start-up company SaverOne. The company has developed a unique product that completely prevents cellular distractions even before they occur.
SaverOne’s way to prevent cellular distraction is by identifying the phone of someone in the driver’s environment, “taking over” it, and disabling all prohibited applications while driving without the driver having any discretion to change it.
SaverOne’s technology is currently the only technology that provides a practical, proven, and available solution to this issue. In the past, we have seen that the legislature created a regulation that required car importers and drivers to be equipped with various safety measures – from the airbags to the yellow vest. The new study shows that if the legislature decides to make a similar move with a distraction prevention system, such a decision is expected to save the Israeli economy about NIS 3.2 billion each year.
