Estimating the cost of two-wheeler road accident injuries in India using the willingness to pay method

ABSTRACT

Financial loss due to road traffic accidents is very huge in India; yet, remarkable studies were not done to quantify the loss. In this study, an effort is made through a Stated Preference (SP) survey to know how users value the safety. The amount of money that the road users are ready to contribute for a secured transportation facility is derived from these data. The SP data were collected from two-wheeler riders in Calicut, Kondotty and Manjeri. Attributes included in the SP experiment were time and cost of travel and number of traffic accidents in a year and the WTP values are calculated through binary logit analysis. It was observed that travel cost, accident rate of the route selected, age, occupation, personal income and number of household members have significant impact on the decision-making process. WTP value of a road accident for a two-wheeler user was found to be Rs 0.4232/person/trip.

KEYWORDS:

• Willingness to pay
• stated preference survey
• cost of accidents
• binary logit model

Acknowledgments

The authors extend sincere gratitude to the Centre for Transportation Research, Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut for providing necessary funding to carry out the research work. Also, the help rendered by Ms Geethu Ashok, Post Graduate student of the Traffic and Transportation Division of the institute during the initial formulation of the work is greatly acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sivakumar Balakrishnan

Sivakumar Balakrishnan is at present a Research Scholar in the Traffic and Transportation Planning Division, Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut. He has completed MTech in Traffic and Transportation Engineering and has 5 years of R&D experience and 9 years of teaching experience.

Krishnamurthy Karuppanagounder

Krishnamurthy Karuppanagounder is working as Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut since 2009. He has awarded Doctorate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in the year 2008.  He has 18 publications in his credit in various Journals and Conference Proceedings.