Commuting Accidents in Italian Workers’ Compensation System: Statistical and Actuarial Analysis

Since 2000 Italian workers’ compensation system (Inail) started to indemnify commuting accidents, i.e. accidents occurred during the worker’s journey from home to the workplace and vice-versa.

In Italy every year, approximately 15% of injuries at work happen due to commuting accidents. More than 50% of commuting accident occur among female workers, who are usually employed in less risky jobs than men are.

The number of fatal cases highlights the danger of commuting accidents: in the period between 2018 and 2022 about 25% of work-related deaths occurred during home-work-home journey.

Furthermore, commuting accident’s after-effects are on average more serious than general accidents; this is confirmed above all for events indemnified in permanent annuity, where the average degree of permanent disability is 7% higher.

Because of this, Inail carried out a study to build specific mortality tables to use in actuarial assessments for the annuitants who suffered a commuting accident.

The survival of commuting accident’s annuitants with medium-low disabilities (16% -60%) showed a slightly lower trend than biological damage injuries with the same impairment degree; however, both collectives have a higher survival than Italian population’s one.

As the disability becomes more serious, life expectancy of an injured is always lower than Italian population’s one; in case of commuting accident this difference is much more evident.