The Tradeoffs Associated with Rerouting Highway Shipments of Hazardous Materials to Minimize Risk

Recent legislative and regulatory activities at the federal level have focused attention on the highway routing of hazardous materials. The question is whether routes that minimize the risk of release accidents (i.e., the expected number of persons impacted by releases of hazardous materials) should be used in lieu of the routes that have the lowest operating costs. This policy issue is addressed for interstate shipments by using a national network model to determine the practical route and minimum risk route between each of 100 different origin‐destination pairs (state capitals). The resulting cost‐risk tradeoffs are then used to estimate the average cost of rerouting per fatality averted, the value of which turns out to be within the range of values for a number of familiar existing regulations.