The impact of replacing heavy passenger vehicles (LTVs and SUVs) in the British Columbia fleet with lighter versions.

Full Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The study reported in this article addressed the potential safety impact of consumer movement toward smaller vehicle choices by examining the makeup of the full British Columbia (BC) vehicle fleet--from smaller cars to heavy commercial vehicles. The basic assumption made was that some operators of heavy light trucks/vans (LTVs) or sport utility vehicles (SUVs) would, in the short term, be induced to downsize to lighter vehicles of the same type. METHOD: The 2000-2007 BC crash-claim data at the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) was used to create matrices of average information by culpable and nonculpable entities in two-vehicle collisions in 15 weight categories. Models for the effects of various driver/crash characteristics on injury potential were created and used to adjust the effect calculated solely on the basis of weight change. Levels of heavy LTV/SUV replacement from 0.05 to 0.95 of the current population were tested and the redistribution of vehicles was done in such a way that the relationship between small-large vehicle injury ratio and large-small vehicle mass ratio over the whole fleet remained constant as did the relative proportions of culpable and nonculpable involvements. RESULTS: The net effect of downsizing in the manner assumed for this study was mildly positive in terms of overall injury risk--that is, downsizing resulted in slightly fewer total injuries--but not in the case of fatalities, which tended to be increased by a more substantial margin. However, the results showed that even replacing substantial proportions of the heavy LTV/SUV population would not result in a large impact on safety. CONCLUSIONS: Replacing almost all the heavy LTV/SUVs with lighter versions should reduce injuries by less than 1 percent and increase fatalities by 3.5 percent percent. Nevertheless, in terms of persons impacted and the associated costs, the effects would be noticeable. The issue for policy-makers is to judge how the environmental benefits associated with encouraging such change compare with the net costs in terms of safety outcomes.

Author information

Author/s: Cooper, Peter J (PJ); Zheng, Yvonne (Y); Andersen, Linda (L); Pellegrini, Nicole (N);

Affiliation: Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Peter.Cooper(-atsign-)icbc.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Traffic injury prevention (Traffic Inj Prev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Oct; vol 10 (issue 5) : pp 458-66

Dates: Created 2009/09/11; Completed 2009/09/24;

PMID: 19746310, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 9/24/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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