When a parent gets into a car crash, the cost is far more than just the expense of medications or repairing the vehicle. In fact, the economic costs of a traffic collision include medical expenses, administration costs, employer costs, property damage expenses and wage losses. Other costs include the loss of qualify of life and loss of companionship in some cases.
A 2015 traffic collision fact report from Kentucky details just how much traffic accidents cost the state and individuals each year.
Fatalities are expensive
Fatalities cost approximately $1,500,000 each when considering only the economic cost. Comparably, the comprehensive cost of each fatality is $9,900,000. In 2014, the last year data was collected, 694 traffic fatalities occurred in Kentucky. The estimated total comprehensive cost for these fatalities is $6,870,600,000.
Injuries cost billions each year
Those are only statistics for fatalities. More people suffer injuries than die. Even though injuries tend to cost less, the higher rate of injuries does cost the state billions each year. The comprehensive cost of incapacitating injuries is approximately $3,492,500,000 yearly, while the comprehensive cost of possible injuries costs $2,835,210,000 yearly.
Even non-incapacitating injuries cost a small fortune. Individually, each non-capacitating injury costs approximately $298,000 comprehensively, adding up to around $3,522,956,000 yearly with 11,822 non-capacitating injuries in the state.
The true cost of a parent’s injury or death
The economic costs, which don’t include the lost quality of life that is associated with a serious injury or death, are often lower than the comprehensive losses. It is misleading to consider only an economic loss because people who suffer injuries or families who lose loved ones suffer in other ways.
Children may lose the parent’s income along with the parent’s education and care. A parent provides childcare, which may now become a necessity on top of a lost income and increased medical expenses. Parents provide meals, transportation and volunteer in some cases, taking up slack in organizations that need volunteers to function. For example, a parent working as a volunteer coach provides a service that, although it does not pay, results in a loss for many individuals including his or her own child.
When a parent suffers an injury, his or her spouse or partner suffers, too. A loss of companionship is indescribably hard. Additionally, the partner may have to work less to make time to care for the parent with a severe or debilitating injury, creating another loss that has to be accounted for.
After a serious accident or the death of a loved one, families have options for how to move forward. Many may choose to make a claim to seek compensation for the above costs.
