Federative Republic of Brazil National Road Safety Capacity Review
Estimating the Cost of Crashes in Brazil
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- 3.5Crime versus Road Crashes in Brazil
- 3.6Summary of Key Fatal and Injury Crash Factors in Brazil
- Drink driving
- Motorcycle Helmet Usage
- Road Quality and Road Design
3.4Estimating the Cost of Crashes in BrazilThis section provides estimates of costs based on the application of two international methodologies relevant to Brazil: an estimate of the costs as a percentage of GDP, and an estimate of the costs of deaths and injuries relative to GDP per person. Recent developments in costing methods25 have changed our understanding of the economic burden of serious crashes and thus earlier studies of the costs of crashes in Brazil26 may present a significant underestimate of costs. These are estimated for 2013, as required data exist for that year and it is acknowledged that these are approximate estimates. As a middle income country, it is reasonable to expect that road crashes cost as much as 5% to 8% of GDP in absolute economic terms based on recent costing methods. Taking 5% of GDP for Brazil (about BRL 5,158 billion27) yields an estimated cost of road trauma for the state of over BRL 258 billion. An alternative approach is to assess costs of crashes from estimated numbers of deaths and serious injuries. iRAP provides such an estimate (multipliers of 70 times GDP per capita for fatalities, and 17 times GDP per capita for serious injuries28 with GDP per capita of BRL 25,655 for 201329). Applying these costs results in a cost estimate of BRL 1.80 million per death and BRL 0.44 million per serious injury. For the 45,436 deaths and 203,631 serious injuries as estimated above based on DataSUS, the estimated road cost is about BRL 170 billion for these aspects of crash cost alone. These disparate estimation methods produce significantly different results (with the lower figure not including cost for minor injury crashes and property damage) suggesting crash costs between BRL 170 and BRL 258 billion for 2013 in Brazil. 3.5Crime versus Road Crashes in BrazilTraffic crashes kill more people in Latin America than crime and violence. Yet, the latter remain widely reported as the region’s primary concern. However, it is noteworthy that for Brazil official figures suggest that homicide is more common that transport deaths. In official figures for 2012, 45,751 people died in traffic crashes versus 56,337 homicides. Clearly both are critical issues for Brazil to address. However, three aspects of the data suggest that traffic crashes may be more important as a cause of death. First, the official figure for traffic crashes may be underestimated. Second, traffic crash deaths are growing much more rapidly: from 2002 to 2012, road crash deaths grew from 33,288 to 46,58130: an increase of 38.3%, or even accounting for population increases over that decade, this increase remains 24.5%. Over the same period, homicides grew from 49,695 to 56,337, an increase, in absolute terms, of 13.4%, or accommodating population increases, 2.1%. Third, a major component of the suffering and hard economic cost of road crashes arises from the much larger number of serious injuries than deaths. 3.6Summary of Key Fatal and Injury Crash Factors in BrazilThe statistic fatalities per reported collision provides a guide to severity of crashes, as a guide to the types of collision on which Road Safety efforts should focus. Data for Brazil federal roads31 identify that focus is warranted on the following crash types in particular: head-on, hit pedestrian, right angle collision, and run-off-road crashes (Figure 2). Speeding Speeding is correctly recognized as the largest single behavioral contributor to road deaths globally, and this is also true of Brazil. Speeding is the key factor in road related trauma as identified in best quality research and reviews32 including by world leading authorities: the World Health Organization, World Bank, and Global Road Safety Partnership33 as well as the OECD34. Figure 2. Proportion of road crash types on federal highways. Travel speeds commonly remain excessive, and are a key contributor to both crash occurrence and severity. Part of the reason for this is the high tolerance which is accepted above the speed limit before drivers are penalized for speeding, along with the low probability of being caught. Simply getting motorists to obey the speed limits would save many lives in Brazil. In many cases, speed limits are also too high, set rather for traffic management purposes than for Road Safety ones.
Deep-rooted legal/civil rights/constitutional challenges to the legal basis of drink-drive testing exist, though serious attempts to address this have occurred at a national level. Yet, improvement has been achieved, as can be seen from the numbers of people charged with drink-driving (including use of other substances, though the large majority of these offences are drink-driving). Motorcycle Helmet UsageMotorcycle helmet use is the norm (though not uniform) in cities, but helmet use is less common in remote and rural areas. Failure of helmet use (or improper usage) is a significant contributor to Brazil’s unsustainable motorcycle trauma problem. Seat Belt UsageSeat belt usage rates remain low in Brazil in front seats and even lower in rear seats. Seat belt non-use is common (especially compared with the best performing countries which are reaching 99% usage rates). Road Quality and Road DesignBrazil contains the widest possible range of road quality and design safety (Figure 3), from extraordinary structures to weather dependent poor quality dirt roads, and from effective use of safety barriers to most unforgiving roadsides. The Federal, State and Municipal road networks are not designed as a safe system. Furthermore, there is no, or not yet, any strong movement in this direction in Brazil. A number of factors underlie this slow progress towards, including a continuing strongly victim-blaming culture, hindering concrete intervention on infrastructure (an also preventing enforcement). Figure 3. Examples of the range of roads in Brazil (examples from São Paulo and Bahia). 
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