ProtAct-Us at SAFER Research Day: Making the Hidden Costs of Road Injuries Visible

What is the true cost of a road crash — and who ends up paying it? These were the questions at the heart of the SAFER Research Day “What does it cost? The price of traffic safety and the cost of getting it wrong,” held on 2 June 2026 in Gothenburg and online. The event brought together researchers, public authorities, industry representatives and practitioners to examine how the economics of traffic safety shape real-world decisions — and ProtAct-Us was there to contribute a critical piece of that picture.

Putting a number on the invisible

Representing the project, Werner Leitgeb of Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH presented on “Capturing the real economic burden of non-fatal road injuries.” His talk addressed a blind spot in how road safety is often costed: non-fatal injuries, which frequently generate the largest long-term societal costs of all. Rehabilitation, reduced working capacity, and lasting effects on health and quality of life rarely show up in the headline numbers used to justify (or deprioritise) safety investments.

Leitgeb’s presentation made the case that existing models risk systematically understating these long-term consequences. For ProtAct-Us, improving how these outcomes are assessed isn’t just an academic exercise, it directly affects how convincingly safety investments can be argued for, and how resources get prioritised where they matter most.

A day built around one uncomfortable question

The presentation fit into a broader theme running through the day: can we afford Vision Zero, or can we afford not to pursue it? Speakers repeatedly returned to the gap between what gets measured and what gets prioritised — and to the reality that many of the costliest consequences of road trauma remain effectively hidden from decision-makers.

Among the day’s key conclusions:

• Visibility drives priority. What gets measured gets acted on — and what stays hidden gets overlooked.
• Long-term consequences are underrepresented. Reduced quality of life, lost productivity, and organisational impacts of serious injuries are rarely fully captured.
• A shared framework is needed. Greater transparency and common standards for calculating and communicating road safety costs would strengthen the case for investment.
• The real bottleneck isn’t calculation — it’s decision-making. Even where the evidence is solid, political and institutional friction can delay implementation.
• The question of who pays remains unresolved. When the benefits of safety improvements are shared across society, the question of who should fund them becomes a genuinely difficult one.

The overall message from the SAFER Research Day resonates directly with ProtAct-Us’ mission: road safety is not only about saving lives and preventing injuries — it is about making the full societal value of safety visible, so that it genuinely informs the decisions being made.

More information about the SAFER Research Day and its presentations is available in here.