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Abstract
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This paper studies the risk connected with the various seating positions in cars. An attempt is made to measure the risk relative to exposure, expressed miles performed by passenger cars, including station wagons, and in some instances taxis; two and three-wheeled vehicles, and all commercial vehicles are excluded. The study area is Metropolitan Brisbane (Queensland) population 621, 550, and the year 1961.
The types of risk studied include: (a) the risk of accident involvement while various seating positions are occupied; (b) the risk of being killed, or injured, while occupying various seating positions (here the term "casualty" will be used to combine the terms "fatality" and "the occurrence of injury").
In case (a), the vehicle, or its driver is the statistical unit; in (b), it is the driver and/or passenger combined in the term "vehicle occupant", or simply "occupant".
Other terms that follow necessarily are the driver-mile, vehicle-mile, passenger-mile, and occupant-mile of performance, and the accident-rate, involvement-rate, fatality-rate, injury-rate and the two combined as casualty- rate.
The third potential type of risk is that of an accident, or a type of accident occurring at various levels of occupancy; it will be discussed only tangentially.
This report concerns only part of a larger study, a combination of two projects started by the Australian Road Research Board in 1963. One is the "Queensland Survey into Motor Vehicle Performance", and the other is "The Brisbane Study of Police Reports of Road Accidents".
Papers published so far have dealt with the methodological aspects of the design, and the lessons drawn from the survey to help future designs, as well as accident involvement rates per 108 miles travelled relative to the type of vehicle, the metropolitan, provincial urban, or rural use of the vehicle, the place of garaging, and the sex, and age of driver. |