Citation

Cooper PJ, Zheng Y, Andersen L, Pellegrini N. Traffic Injury Prev. 2009; 10(5): 458-466.

Affiliation

Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Peter.Cooper@icbc.com

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15389580903147874

PMID

19746310

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.

Language: en