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Assessing Risk, Effectiveness, and Benefits in Transportation Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2023

Deborah Vaughn Aiken  and
Stephen Brumbaugh
Deborah Vaughn Aiken*
Affiliation:
U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary, Office of the General Counsel, Washington, DC, USA
Stephen Brumbaugh
Affiliation:
U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary, Office of the General Counsel, Washington, DC, USA
*
Corresponding author: Deborah Vaughn Aiken; Email: dtvaiken@gmail.com
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Abstract

We review the practice of safety benefits analysis for federal transportation regulations in the USA. Using a case-study approach, we explore the linkages between risk assessment and benefits analysis, adding to previous work exploring these linkages for environmental health regulations. Challenges for calculating the benefits of transportation safety regulations arise because safety outcomes, like many noncancer health effects, typically do not have formal risk relationships like dose–response functions established for them. Analysts often rely on engineering or other expert judgments or resort to qualitative discussions to connect a regulatory intervention to its intended outcome. Challenges also arise when regulatory outcomes are intangible or do not have established metrics. Safety outcomes are not always measurable in concrete terms like mortality risk and may include difficult-to-operationalize concepts like “safety culture.” If the outcome is not measurable, then quantifying or monetizing the expected effects of a regulation is not possible, and the ability to conduct robust qualitative discussions also may be limited. Economists evaluating benefits for safety regulations encounter limitations analogous to difficulties found in health regulations. To inform policymaking effectively, economists and safety experts could look to the relationship developed in environmental economics between economists and health scientists.

Keywords

Benefits analysisrisk assessmenttransportation safetyR4 (transportation economics)D61 (cost-benefit analysis)
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Summer 2023 , pp. 318 - 335
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis

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