Citation

Keall MD, D'Elia A, Newstead SV, Watson L. J. Australas. Coll. Road Saf. 2018; 29(3): 22-29.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Australasian College of Road Safety)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

Australasian fleets have changed substantially over the past decade, with SUVs and light commercial vehicles becoming more popular. These vehicles have been shown in other studies to impose higher fatality risk to pedestrians. For newer vehicles, pedestrian safety may also benefit from international New Car Assessment Program protocols and safety regulation. To quantify such vehicle fleet effects on pedestrian injury severity, this paper analyses pedestrian injury outcomes using Australian crash data. Younger drivers (aged 25 and under) and male drivers were associated with higher severity pedestrian and serious pedestrian injury than collisions with cars, which is likely to be related to their frontal structure configuration.

There was a trend towards better injury outcomes when the vehicle had a more recent year of manufacture, consistent with - but not necessarily attributable to - changes in vehicle design. Trends over the past 15 years were also assessed using crash data from New Zealand and five Australian States. All other factors being equal, increasing proportions of SUVs and commercial vehicles in these fleets will have increased pedestrian injury severity risks. Nevertheless, this was more than counterbalanced by a reduction in injury severity associated with newer vehicles entering the fleets. The strong effects of vehicle factors found in our analysis support assessment protocols and safety regulations that measure the impact of vehicle frontal structure design on pedestrian injury outcomes.
Keywords Pedestrian; injury severity; vehicle safety standards

Key Findings

• Pedestrians are very vulnerable to injury when impacted by a vehicle: policy and regulation around vehicles and fleet composition must therefore consider their safety

• Increases in sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light commercial vehicles in Australasian fleets will have decreased pedestrian safety

• However, newer vehicles pose less risk than older vehicles for pedestrian severe and fatal injury

• Trends in the vehicle fleets show this last effect will have reduced injury severity levels much more than the effects of more SUVs and light commercial vehicles in the fleet

Language: en