Reducing the death toll of road accidents in Costa Rica
The study “Reducing the death toll of road accidents in Costa Rica through the introduction of roadworthiness inspections by the government“, conducted by Mr. Wolfgang H. Schulz and Sebastian Scheler from Zeppelin University, and financed by CITA, investigates the effects on traffic safety and the associated economic savings of the introduction by RITEVE of the Periodical Technical Inspections (PTI) in Costa Rica.
The goal of this paper is to scientifically determine the human lives saved as well as injury reductions associated with the periodical technical inspection (PTI) regime introduced in Costa Rica in 2003. The study goal includes further an assessment of the economic impacts of PTI. The methodological framework for the economic assessment is a cost-benefit analysis.
Since there were no national estimates for the costs of crashes in Costa Rica available, this study derives and evaluates in a first step different ways to estimate these costs. Subsequently these are used for a cost-benefit analysis to bench-mark the policy decision to introduce periodical technical inspections. The findings show that there are considerable economic gains from having such a system in place with high cost-benefit ratios. The study shall give insights and encourage other countries to introduce or consider such measures as they can be an important step toward more road safety and reduce the cost of crashes for society and the economy.