Abstract
The benefit to cost ratio of road salting has been estimated to be between 6.3 to 1 to 18.1 to 1 favoring benefits over costs. These benefits do not include a dollar figure for lives saved in reduced response time to medical emergencies, reduced response time to fire emergencies, and lives saved in reduced traffic accidents. The benefit cost ratio, even without these factors, certainly justifies the use of deicing salts.
The use of deicing salts has remained fairly constant since 1970 and any variations appear to be due to the severity of the winter. The primary deicing salt used is sodium chloride.
Corrosion is not restricted to the snow belt, but can be severe in any of the coastal areas. Even within the snow belt at locations which are not on the coast, corrosion varies with temperature, relative humidity, whether the area is industrial or nonindustrial, and whether the car is kept in a heated garage.
A carefully designed and executed test reported by the American Public Works Association would appear to indicate that it is not possible to add an inhibitor to salt to prevent corrosion. However, the automobile manufacturers appear to be solving this problem as evidenced by Ford's 3-year warranty for 1977 cars and General Motors objective of 5 years without corrosion and 10 years without perforation in 1979 automobiles.
