Clark Williams-Derry of the ever-fabulous Northwest Environment Watch has written an excellent post on the cost of car crashes in Washington State.
A few of the more sobering statistics from his post (but go read the whole thing because it's very close to something I had in mind to write for Mad Times only much better)
Williams-Derry goes on to estimate the economic cost of all these accidents and comes out with somewhere between $4 and $8 billion per year. At the low end that's a per capita cost of over $600 per year.
It's like with health care, though. It's hard to get too fired up about it because if you're lucky, most years, your share of that cost is $0. Speaking as someone whose share for this year is in four figures (and could have been a lot worse!), I'd like to find ways to lessen these costs both for myself and for my neighbors.
Posted by jeffy at June 16, 2005 03:23 PM