Depends what you hit, or what hits you. This statement of survivability is as true today as it was many years ago when traffic safety concerns were in their infancy.
I recently wrote a blog about the creeping increase in size of American vehicles and, in particular, the size of pickup trucks and SUVs. That increase in size has had a significant effect on road deaths where there is a mismatch in the “tonnage” of the respective vehicles in a crash. The heavier one always wins, and the lighter one always loses. Its simple physics.
Despite the huge advancement in vehicle safety design, those laws of physics still hold true. Thirty years ago, when a pickup truck, or an SUV, hit a passenger car, the driver of the car was four times more likely to die. Today, that statistic is three times more likely to die. Better, but not significantly!
The Economist magazine recently conducted a survey of 7.5 million crashes in the U.S. to try and quantify how many lives would be saved by reining in the heaviest vehicles. It collected data from ten years of police reports filed in fourteen states.
The results show that, as expected, heavier vehicles are safer for their passengers than lighter ones. The heaviest vehicles in this data set – those weighing around 6,800lbs – suffer 4.1 “own-car-deaths” per 10,000 crashes, compared with 6.6 for those weighing around 3,500lbs, and 15.8 for those weighing around 2,300lbs.
The other way around, the heaviest vehicles were responsible for 37 deaths per 10,000 crashes, the medium sized vehicles were responsible for 5.7 deaths per 10,000 crashes and the lighter vehicles were responsible for 2.6 deaths per 10,000 crashes.
These results show that for every life that the heaviest vehicles save (the ones in those vehicles) more than a dozen lives are lost in other vehicles.
The overwhelming conclusion is that as vehicles increase in weight, they kill more people than they save.
I should add here, for the sake of perspective, that the average new car in the U.S. weighs 4,400lbs (compared with 3,300lbs in Europe and 2,600lbs in Japan). Vehicles weighing more than 5,000lbs accounted for 31% of new cars in 2023, which is up from 22% five years earlier.
You don’t have to be an expert in vehicle design, or even have good observation skills, to have noticed the continual increase in weight (bulk) of SUVs and pickup trucks in the U.S. as each new model year rolls around. The latest batch of pickup trucks are frankly obscene – the front profiles are so tall that you can barely see the driver if you stand in front of them and, heaven forbid, if the truck is moving, the driver can barely see you if you are close enough. If you are a child, you have no hope.
The auto industry rolls out its usual excuse for this steady increase in size – its what customers want. The Government colludes by subsidizing heavier vehicle taxes by setting more lenient fuel-efficiency standards for light trucks (a misnomer if ever there was one) and allowing business owners to deduct the cost of heavy-duty vehicles from their taxable income – the heavier the vehicle, the more it costs and the more tax deduction available.
I should also add that the heavier the vehicle, the more fuel it uses, so this movement towards heavier vehicles is gleefully supported by the oil industry, which politicians, who should be acting in the public interest, avidly support with their greed for more campaign contributions.
As I said at the beginning, your chance of survival in a crash, depends on what you hit, or what hits you. Unfortunately, we do not have that choice in most cases.
The increase in vehicle size and weight is clearly a case where government intervention could easily save lives with relatively simple regulations. Some hope!
