Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives (May 2024)
The impact of road accidents on hospital admissions and the potential of ADAS in containing health expenditure: Evidence from Piedmont data
Abstract
On average, more than 3,600 people die every day on world’s roads: road accidents result in over 1.3 million deaths and 50 million injuries annually, placing a significant burden on society and generating substantial economic costs for Governments and Regions, which are responsible for healthcare expenditures.This study proposes and applies a novel methodology aimed at quantifying the effects obtainable from the use of the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) on the base of a real case, in economic terms as well.The real case consists on the analysis of a very large dataset regarding public health and hospital admissions, made possible by the exceptional access to the internal database, available for this scope, of the Piedmont Region (IT).Unlike the decades that have passed, it is now conceivable to identify transport related technological solutions that make it possible to prevent, sometimes even avoid, road accidents or at least reduce their severity. These solutions can be identified in ADAS. In a nutshell, their aim is to create a protective layer that mitigates the risk of accidents or reduces their severity. This concept is analogous to the “onion diagram” used in the railway sector, where multiple layers of protection prevent a single failure from leading to an accident.In essence, ADAS aim to introduce the industrial concept of fail-safe into road transport, at least providing it with a pre-alert: safety has been so far delegated only to the driver’s alertness, caution and dexterity.Through the selective analysis of the health costs linked to road accidents, it is possible to quantify the elements considered important for the choices of public decision-makers on both subjects of health and sustainable mobility: in the Piedmont region, the average cost of a hospitalization following a road accident in 2013 was significantly higher than a hospitalization due to general trauma and values have remained similar in the following years. In the same period, road accidents accounted for 15% of the total number of injuries due to trauma, which implies this share can be affected by the adoption of ADAS, so as analysed within this paper for the years 2017–2019, i.e. before the COVID-19 pandemic.The weight of road accidents on hospitalisation is quantified: on the base of a huge Italian database, the average costs of hospitalisation due to loss of control is quantified. The role of ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) for reducing costs of hospitalisation emerges.
