On 22/05/2019 17:20, JNugent wrote:

Yes but... that's the estimate (ie, made-up) average cost of a road
accident fatality. It includes - and this is important - an estimated
value of the deceased person's rest of life productivity, which must be
quite difficult to estimate accurately. So that bit of the figure has to
be taken with a few pinches of salt.

It also includes "human costs" which means that a value is put on the
distress and losses caused to bereaved relatives, friends, etc. I can
see that in these touch-feely days, one would want to value such losses,
but whether it ought to be done in money - and how that should be done
anyway - is far from clear.

I'm sure that you're 100% right on this. It's really interesting (to
me!) to contemplate how to go about making that calculation.

In any case, Mr Cheerful said £1m of taxpayer money wasted, and clearly
that does not include human costs, nor rest of life productivity.



Overall, it does not mean that £1,690,000 is the value of emergency
services expended on dealing with the incident. The figure for "lost
output" will be the biggest part of it. Most of it will be expended or
incurred even if no emergency services are involved.