In 2005, the total monetary costs associated with car accidents reached almost $100 billion, according to the results of a study released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of the $99 billion that the CDC said was needed to pay for car accident-related expenses that year, $17 billion was spent on medical care for both fatal and non-fatal injuries that happened as a result of the crashes. Teens and young adults were disproportionately represented among the dead and injured, the CDC said.
Dr. Grant Baldwin, the CDC’s director of unintentional injury prevention, said that “every 10 seconds, someone in the U.S. is treated in an emergency department for crash-related injuries, and nearly 40,000 people die from these injuries each year. This study highlights the magnitude of the problem of crash-related injuries from a cost perspective, and the numbers are staggering.”
Besides the collective problem of high costs, individuals could see serious damage to their own pocketbooks as the result of a car accident, experts say, including increased auto insurance rates.