Citation

Cameron M, Mach T, Neiger D, Graham A, Ramsay R, Pappas M, Haley J. Road Transp. Res. 1992; 1(3): 4-18.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, Australian Road Research Board)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The paper outlines the concepts and terminology of vehicle safety ratings and summarizes the published ratings based on mass crash data from the United States, Sweden and Great Britain. It then describes the development of vehicle crashworthiness ratings based on injury compensation claims and police accident reports from Victoria and New South Wales. Crashworthiness was measured by a combination of injury severity (of injured drivers) and injury risk (of drivers involved in crashes). Injury severity was based on 22,600 drivers injured in crashes in the two States. Injury risk was based on 70,900 drivers involved in crashes in New South Wales where a vehicle was towed away. The results include crashworthiness ratings for the makes and models crashing in sufficient numbers to measure their crash performance adequately. The ratings were normalized for the driver sex and speed limit at the crash location, the two factors found to be strongly related to injury risk and/or severity, and to vary substantially across makes and models of Australian crash-involved cars. This allows differences in crashworthiness of individual models to be seen, uncontaminated by major crash exposure differences. The relationship between the rating scores and the mass of individual passenger car models is also examined.

Language: en