Estonia, Financial Services, Insurance, Legislation, Transport

According to his study, in 2011 the sum was 280.7 million euros, in 2010, 265.9, and in 2009, 267.7 million euros. In 2007, however it was 364.3 million euros.

The first and biggest share of this is the material damage caused by deaths, which last year amounted to an estimated 96 million euros. "The broad calculation is that a premature death of a person means around 15 million kroons in old currency in the form of deprived taxes and other additional value to the state," said Ernits.

The second, equally important part is damages that accompany people becoming disabled, which amounted to around 77.8 million euros last year. This is the most difficult to evaluate since ETIF does not have information about the level of injuries of persons who have been granted a disability category and not all people who become disabled in traffic accidents get insurance compensations since they caused the accident.

Another major cost is property costs of vehicles: the volume that insurance companies pay for that has to be multiplied in two since insurance compensates damages only to the victim, not the culprit. The property costs amounted to an estimated 100.1 million euros.

The costs accompanying injuries are the smallest, 6.8 million euros; these consist of people's hospital bills and work that they could not do while being on medical leave.