Hidden Cost of Not Replacing Vehicles - Accidents?

By Steve Saltzgiver

The likely single largest expense of owning and operating a fleet of vehicles is in fact the liability costs associated with vehicle accidents. However, this is often a overlooked expense because it is often regarded as a Risk issue, meaning Fleet and Risk departments need to work closely together on mitigating the organization's total exposure. It's no secret we live in a very litigious society and law suits are more common place than households with two vehicles. In today's world, lawyers are monitoring police channels trying to get a jump on their next pay check.

It is estimated that 12-13% of all accidents each year are the result of a vehicle mechanical failure and since six million car accidents occur annually in the United States this issue becomes ever more paramount. It is estimated that a person dies every 12 minutes in a vehicle accident and crashes kill 40,000 people a year. The occurrence of vehicle accidents is now the leading cause of death for individuals between 2 and 34 years old and someone is injured in a vehicle accident every 14 seconds and two million suffer permanent injuries.

These statistics make vehicle accident liability due to mechanical failure hard to ignore if you are a responsible Fleet Manager.


• Over 25% of all drivers were involved in an auto accident in a five-year period.
• Excessive speed is the second most common cause of deadly auto accidents, which accounts for about 30% of fatal accidents.
• Car crashes cost each American more than $1,000 a year; $164.2 billion is the total cost each year across the United States.
• Car accidents are the leading cause of death for kids between 2 and 14; About 2,000 children die each year from injuries caused by car accidents.
• Each year, almost 250,000 children are injured in car crashes, meaning nearly 700 kids are harmed every day.
• Car accidents are the leading cause of acquired disability nationwide.
2008 Car Accident Statistics
• In 2008, the number of overall traffic fatalities reached a record low since 1961, and that number continued to decrease in the first few months of 2009.
• The number of car crash deaths in 2008, 37,261, dropped 9.7% from the number of deaths in 2007; this is the largest annual reduction since 1982.
• The 2008 passenger car occupant fatalities have decreased for the sixth year in a row, accounting for 25,351 deaths. This is the lowest number since 1975 when the NHTSA began collecting fatality crash data.
• Motor vehicle traffic crashes injured about 2.35 million people in 2008, which is the lowest number the NHTSA has seen since it began collecting injury data in 1988.
• In 2008, there were a total of over 5.8 million car crashes, 1,630,000 causing injury, 4,146,000 resulting in property-damage only, and 34,017 ending in death.
• There were 15,983 urban crash fatalities in 2008, decreasing 11% from 2007.
• Car accident deaths in rural crashes totaled 20,905, a 10% decrease from 2007.

Bottom line: Properly maintaining your vehicles and controlling driver behaviors to reduce accidents can substantially reduce your fleet management costs.