Just had the fleeting thought that maybe there is a substantial cost to review and create enormous traffic safety research systems and the subsequent training required of law enforcement personnel and administrative staff.
In contrast to the status quo which is basically a long running experiment, I’m imagining the control condition is cars are electronically speed limited to 15 mph since there is substantial evidence that travelling at this speed reduces traffic fatalities to nearly zero.
Has anyone seen estimates of the administrative costs associated with traffic safety analysis? My first intuition is that it is trivial compared to the damage to life, limb, and property.
This is one of those things where the answer is “it depends”. Like what counts as traffic safety research and what doesn’t. I’m sure depending on how you choose the end result is wildly different.
I agree there may be quite a large range but just to say that can still be useful.
I think its crucial to start denormalising all the costs and externalities of car focussed transport policy. Motornormativity means policy makers and general public internalise costs of progressive infrastructure and are blind to the huge costs of the status quo.
So even being able to pin a wide range on it can be helpful. Not for financial costs but for emissions I was able to show even for the lower end of a wide range of additional hard-to-quantify emissions for scenarios that didn’t drastically reduce private car usage as well as electricify would blow past thier carbon budgets.