Economic costs

The global economic cost of MVCs was estimated at $518 billion per year in 2003, and $100 billion in developing countries. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the U.S. cost in 2000 at $230 billion. A 2010 US report estimated costs of $277 billion which included lost productivity, medical costs, legal and court costs, emergency service costs (EMS), insurance administration costs, congestion costs, property damage, and workplace losses. The value of societal harm from motor vehicle crashes, which includes both economic impacts and valuation for lost quality-of-life, was $870.8 billion in 2010. Sixty-eight percent of this value represents lost quality-of-life, while 32 percent is economic impacts.

Legal consequences

There are a number of possible legal consequences for causing a traffic collision, including:

• Traffic citations: drivers who are involved in a collision may receive one or more traffic citations for improper driving conduct such as speeding, failure to obey a traffic control device, or driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.Convictions for traffic violations are usually penalized with fines, and for more severe offenses, the suspension or revocation of driving privileges.
• Civil lawsuits: a driver who causes a traffic collision may be sued for damages resulting from the accident, including damages to property and injuries to other persons.
• Criminal prosecution: More severe driving misconduct, including impaired driving, may result in criminal charges against the driver. In the event of a fatality, a charge of vehicular homicide is occasionally prosecuted, especially in cases involving alcohol. Convictions for alcohol offenses may result in the revocation or long term suspension of the drivers license, and sometimes jail time, mandatory drug or alcohol rehabilitation, or both.

Fraud

Sometimes, people may make false insurance claims or commit insurance fraud by staging collisions or jumping in front of moving cars.

United States

In the United States, individuals involved in motor vehicle collisions may be held financially liable for the consequences of an collision, including property damage, and injuries to passengers and drivers. Where another drivers vehicle is damaged as the result of an accident, some states allow the owner of the vehicle to recover both the cost of repair for the diminished value of the vehicle from the at-fault driver. Because the financial liability that results from causing an accident are so high, most U.S. states require drivers to carry liability insurance to cover these potential costs. In the event of serious injuries or fatalities, it is possible for injured persons to seek compensation in excess of the at-fault drivers insurance coverage. In some cases involving a defect in the design or manufacture of motor vehicles, such as where defective design results in SUV rollovers or sudden unintended acceleration^]accidents caused by defective tires, or where injuries are caused or worsened as a result of defective airbags, it is possible that the manufacturer will face a class actionlawsuit.

Art

Cars have come to represent a part of the American Dream of ownership coupled with the freedom of the road. The violence of a car wreck provides a counterpoint to that promise and is the subject of artwork by a number of artists, such as John Salt, Jan Anders Nelson, and Li Yan. Though English, John Salt was drawn to American landscapes of wrecked vehicles like Desert Wreck (airbrushed oil on linen, 1972). Similarly, Jan Anders Nelson works with the wreck in its resting state in junkyards or forests, or as elements in his paintings and drawings. American Landscape  is one example of Nelson´s focus on the violence of the wreck with cars and trucks piled into a heap, left to the forces of nature and time. This recurring theme of violence is echoed in the work of Li Yan. His painting Accident Nº 6 looks at the energy released during a crash. Andy Warhol used newspaper pictures of car wrecks with dead occupants in a number of his Disaster series of silkscreened canvases.John Chamberlain used components of wrecked cars (such as bumpers and crumpled sheet metal fend.