Motor vehicle accidents on the Princes Highway from the Shoalhaven to the Victorian border cost the community almost $80 million per year.
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That’s the number revealed in an analysis of the three local government areas of the Shoalhaven, the Eurobodalla Shire and the Bega Valley.
Fairfax Media has used five-year crash statistics from Transport NSW and estimated road trauma costs from the Australian Automobile Association to uncover the financial burden we all pay.
The costs included are comprehensive, from medical, to emergency services and travel delays to workplace disruption.
They cover the costs to the justice system, coronial and funeral expenses, down to damaged roads and pollution.
The blow to life, health and wellbeing is easily the highest, followed by vehicle damage and disability care.
The crash numbers themselves are trickier to nail down, as not all information is shared in a timely fashion between departments – and it is not always easy to obtain totals for individual state highways.
However, it is clear the cost to the community is significant, totalling more than $392.4 million for the 2013-2017 period – or $78.4 million per annum.
Yet even those figures are vastly overshadowed by the cost of overhauling NSW highway infrastructure.
For example, in 2015, RMS estimated the 25-year upgrade of the Pacfic Highway would total $22 billion by 2020.
