Monetising fatal and serious accidents.
The financial loss calculation from road accidents and fatalities from infrastructure collapse in Ghana is too often underestimated. Our strong beliefs in the Superior Force frequently lead to resignation to fate, gravely missing elements of cost pertinent to the holistic computation of loss from roads and building site construction failures.
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Our neglect of the very obvious costs is thus tragic in itself; and maintaining the attitude would continue to grimly overlook the insurance and corporate responsibilities and needed professionalism.
Accidents such as the 2015 fatal Accra floods (150 lives), building collapses between 2012 and 2014 (19 lives), road accidents for first quarter of 2016 (over 500 lives) are perennial sombre realities that beg the question as to the engineering sense fundamental to infrastructure design and construction. But what has been neglected; why do these problems recur?
The latter question can immediately be answered. We too soon accept spurious non-technical reasons from the government, too early to accept pittances as compensation and are unable to question the unwillingness to hold accountable the perpetrators of the accidents. The recourse is to report losses in terms of the physical structures and property. The true total loss of a fatality encompasses the loss of output estimated as the value of lost earnings (including taxes), health and hospital treatments. Deaths suffered are intrinsic loss of enjoyment of life. Thus, the cost and value of grief and suffering of the casualty, family and friends should not be lost.
Cash cost of accidents
A flash card demonstration of the numbers may help reconfigure our thinking. In transportation and highway principles, understanding the cash cost of accidents helps appreciate the quantum of loss. While we could not replicate the UK to Ghana, we could conservatively estimate the loss for a broad illustrative figure through denominating GDPs of the UK and Ghana. In 2015, the GDP of Ghana was USD 38BN (the World Bank); that of the UK was $ 2,849BN, giving a ratio of 1:75 (Ghana to UK).
For transport projects in 2015, the UK Department for Transport estimated a fatality to about GBP 1.64M (USD 2.51M–UKForex, 2015). The ‘human cost’ of cost component accounts for GBP 1.19M. A serious accident was GBP 184,000 (USD 282,000).
Proportionally, a road fatality in Ghana would be $ 33,467. Allowing for unreported accidents could more than double the fatality value to over $ 66,900 (255,900GHS, Focus Economics) and a serious accident to $ 3,750 (14,300GHS). While these are econometric figures for strategic investment decisions, they are a perspicacious fact into the cost to government of preventing accidents or the loss to society of the occurrence of such accidents.
The strategic road network linking our cities and the trunked intra-city networks account for deaths, not always as a result of human errors but because of unavailable safety facilities for non-motorised road users. The George Walker Bush Highway (N1), Legon–Adentan–Aburi Road (N4), Kasoa-Cape Coast-Elubo Road all have unenviable accident records largely due to the absence of pedestrian facilities. Within the first quarter of 2016, over 500 people died in motor accidents (Adomonline, July 19, 2016). The annual fatality in Ghana in 2015 was 1600; 43 per cent (688) were pedestrians ( National Road Safety Committee (NRSC). Research shows that 902 accidents and 56 deaths occurred in 2000 from construction.
So, what does it cost to mitigate and prevent road accidents? A junction in UK similar to Okponglo Junction near Legon could be signalised with pedestrians/cyclists phases for approximately GBP 150,000 ($ 210,000). It will cost less in Ghana where labour cost is significantly low. But for robustness, let us assume same cost; and to cover operation/maintenance, the infamous 10 per cent ‘project facilitation’, brown envelopes, ‘goro boys’, goats for engineers, kickbacks. At $ 66,900 per fatality, this equates to 3.14 fatalities (for every 3.14 road deaths, we could signalise a junction with safe pedestrian facilities). So, why do we not punish the culpable and stop blaming God for human negligence?
Bad construction practices
Construction and infrastructure projects should catalyse economic growth and improve livelihoods of end users. However, in our part of the world, bad construction practices result in disproportionate levels of accidents.
During the construction of the Circle Overbridge in 2015, improper site management practices were evident. Driving towards the STC Yard in late May 2015, I said to my passenger cousin that the site was dangerous with unsigned diversion routes, open excavations, falling fencing and hoarding; constraints exacerbating traffic and exposing pedestrians to risks. His answer: “You see too much. All we want is a flyover and we will get one”. Then in June, the heavens opened and the skies poured. Through it all, the journalistic consensus was to report the flaming petrol filling station forgetting those trapped in manholes. Long after the fanfare to inaugurate the project, the effect of bad design and construction were still apparent. In Ghana, the Labour Act 2003 strives to address health and safety issues. Under England and Wales Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 – Liability in Tort – contractors have a duty to take care of their employees, visitors and third parties. At Circle, duty of care did not appear to have been discharged, a breach that should not be insulated.
Our governments and institutions are implacable, complex bureaucratic machines that make society unable to question the state and big business, to the extent that the government (National Service Secretariat) was musing about using graduates to direct traffic, demonstrates how we place little premium on life.
We need boiler plate thinking in application of best practice, providing policy makers with clear assessments of benefits of infrastructure, in economic and in human costs terms. Consequently, if you would not negligently let go $66,900 under an ‘act of God,’ why do so when negligence costs you a relative?
Our very recent history is one plagued with cases of judgement debts. As we turn the pages forward in the strengths of the judicial system, civil rights and awareness of institutional responsibility, a new industry will emerge that will thrive on totality of claims.
Under such circumstances and in the absence of institutional accountability for losses, vicarious liability settlements will consume institutions, the effects dwarfing judgement debts. When civil actions begin to visit careless drivers and vehicle owners; as citizens begin suing draughtsmen that masquerade as engineers, cutting corners, causing structural collapse and deaths; as government departments are sued; as engineers are sued for shoddiness; as hospital staff are sued for negligent deaths; and as the courts become serious on corporate manslaughter laws, safety and life will become the prime considerations.
The writer is an infrastructure specialist and a Projects, Contracts and Asset Manager for Highways England, the executive agency for the UK’s Department for Transport.
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