Crashworthiness Review

[russellw]

Good evening

In the thread which discussed the 2013 accident statistics the question was raised about the impact of more crash-worthy vehicles in mitigating road fatality rates.

It seemed like a good idea at the time to track down any available statistical data and throw it into a tech document. It's a lot of work as the data set from the couple of recent reports on the subject is huge so instead of putting the analysis into one document it is going to be spread across a few.

The first of these (Vehicle Crashworthiness Part 1 - Injury Risk) deals with injury risk which is loosely defined as the average risk of death or injury (itself defined by the need for hospitalisation) in a crash for all involved in the crash weighted by their relative exposure across the entire statistical data set.

There are some surprising results so let the debate begin.

Cheers
Russ

[Silver Ghia]

Looks like you are doing a thesis for some Masters degree Russell.

Looking at the results between the Falcons and Commodores for their corresponding years, the Falcon appears to consistently have a lower injury risk than the Commodore.

For the (almost) current cars, the FG rates at 11.49, whereas the VE is 14.88 which is worse than the BA/BF(14.43).

The poor old Lancer CE/CG was expected not to rate too well, which the results illustrate well.

Pity Victoria's statistics aren't included, which would have significantly increased the sample size, thus improve the accuracy of any conclusions made.

[Road_Warrior]

Right, now my head is going to explode after reading that.

Proof though the FG designers did a good job in designing a tough, safe car. It's up there with a lot of euro and other imports in the safety stakes, no small achievement.

[MAGPIE]

Originally Posted by Road_Warrior

Proof though the FG designers did a good job in designing a tough, safe car. It's up there with a lot of euro and other imports in the safety stakes, no small achievement.

It is the newest vehicle in the Large Car list though. The Euro's around it range in age from 1982-2003.

I would be interested to see how it stood next to a Euro of similar age.

[russellw]

I suspect that there has to be sufficient data firstly, secondly the data is only up to 2011 anyway and those later model vehicles that got in are almost certainly involved in enough crashes to remove statistical variances.

Anyway, the next instalment, Crashworthiness Part 2 - Injury Severity is now available in the Tech Portal.

I was really expecting that to look much the same as the previous set and while some of the cars that performed well (or badly) appear in the tables again, there are also some real surprises that had me scratching my head and double checking the data!

These two sets of statistical data are then multiplied and adjusted for mitigating factors to produce the overall crashworthiness ratings which effectively represent an estimated true risk of a driver being killed or seriously injured in each of the vehicles, expressed as a percentage and this data will form the basis for Part 3.

Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

The next episode is now available (Vehicle Crashworthiness Part 3 - Crashworthiness Index) and this one looks at the overall crashworthiness rating of the 490 vehicles under review.

It also includes a comparison of Ford and Holden models from equivalent eras for each segment which is mostly (although not universally) good news for the blue corner.

For those who want the Executive Summary, here are the Top and bottom 10 results overall.

Top Ten


Worst Ten


Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

The final part is now available - Vehicle Crashworthiness Part 4 - Aggressivity Index which differs from the previous data sets in as much as it is concerned with the risk that a particular vehicle presents to other drivers so it is a much more altruistic measure.

For those who want the Executive Summary view:

- there is a significant gap between the least harmful at 1.39 deaths or serious injuries per 100 involved drivers and the most harmful at 9.43

- while newer cars generally performed better that wasn't universally the case and some quite old cars ranked well

- generally smaller and lighter vehicles performed best but there were some notable exceptions

- the Bronco and F-Series trucks were among the worst 25 while the relatively unlamented kA was the only Ford in the top 25.

Cheers
Russ