Harmful events are impacts which occur during a crash which cause injury or property damage. National crash losses by harmful event type are examined in this study. Comprehensive costs are used to combine data on fatalities, injuries, and property damage only (PDO) vehicles into a single economic measure of crash loss.

The percent of crash costs due to fatalities for harmful event types examined ranged from 21% to 92%. Injuries account for 55% of crash costs and fatalities 41%. Average non-fatal injury costs for harmful event types examined vary from $32,000 to $93,000. Vehicle-vehicle, roadside object, pedestrian, and overturn crashes account for 93% of crash costs. Vehicle-vehicle and pedestrian crashes are typically single impact events. Roadside object and overturn crashes often involve several impacts with the first impact not being the most severe. Fatality data were used to explore relations between first and most harmful events in ran-off-road crashes.

Analyses of fatal events alone may produce distortions which can be reduced by using comprehensive costs to combine fatality, injury and PDO crash data. Specific harmful event injury costs should be used in analyses whenever possible. Major differences found between first and most harmful events in ran-off-road crashes indicate a need for States to collect both data elements on their police accident report forms.