A comparison of bus passengers' and car drivers' valuation of casualty risk reductions in their routes

Abstract

Introduction: The economic value of safety represents an important guide to transport policy, and more studies on individuals' valuation of road safety are called for. This paper presents a stated preference study of the value of preventing fatal and serious injuries involving bus passengers and car drivers in road accidents.

Objectives: Former valuation studies based on travel behaviour and route choice have involved primarily car drivers. Our study also included bus passengers, thus providing a comparison of two types of transport mode users. Moreover, the comparison was based on two different valuation methods.

Methodology: About 600 bus passengers and nearly 2300 car users from different areas of Norway reported a recent trip, described by its distance and travel cost. Then they answered stated choice tasks that took a reference in the reported trip and involved trade-offs among travel time, fatal and seriously injured victims and travel costs. Afterwards, they faced a simple trade-off between travel costs, and fatal and seriously injured victims.

Findings: Pooling the data from the two stated preference formats, we derived values of a statistical life and of a statistical seriously injured victim. Regarding the value of statistical life, our point estimates were NOK 45.5 million and NOK 58.3 million for bus users and car users respectively.

Discussion: The point estimates for bus passengers and car users were not statistically different given their confidence intervals. Thus, we recommend the use of a single value, identical for both modes of transport, for the prevention of a statistical fatality as well as for a statistical injury.

Keywords: Choice experiment; Contingent valuation; Fatality; Injury; Insecurity; Time saving.