Corporate Average Fuel Economy & Effect on traffic safety (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

[Leo 9]

Effect on traffic safety

Historically, NHTSA has expressed concerns that automotive manufacturers will increase mileage by reducing vehicle weight, which might lead to weight disparities in the vehicle population and, increased danger for occupants of lighter vehicles. However, vehicle safety ratings are now made available to consumers by NHTSA<41> and by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.<42> A National Research Council report found that the standards implemented in the 1970s and 1980s "probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993.<9> A Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study found that CAFE standards led to "2,200 to 3,900 additional fatalities to motorists per year.<43> The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's 2007 data show a correlation of about 250-500 fatalities per year per MPG.<44> Proponents of higher CAFE standards argue that it is the "Footprint" model of CAFE for trucks that encourages production of larger trucks with concomitant increases in vehicle weight disparities, and point out that some small cars such as the Mini Cooper and Toyota Matrix are four times safer than SUVs like the Chevy Blazer.<44> They argue that the quality of the engineering design is the prime determinant of vehicular safety, not the vehicle's mass. In a 1999 article based on a 1995 IIHS report, USA Today said that 56% of all deaths occurring in small cars were due to either single vehicle crashes or small cars impacting each other. The percentage of deaths attributed to those in small cars being hit by larger cars was one percent.<45> In 2006, IIHS found that some of the smallest cars have good crash safety, while others do not, depending upon the engineering design.<46> In a 2007 analysis, IIHS found that 50 percent of fatalities in small four-door vehicles were single vehicle crashes, compared to 83 percent in very large SUVs. The Mini Cooper had a fatality rate of 68 per million vehicle-years, compared to 115 for the Ford Excursion.<44> A 2005 IIHS plot shows that in collisions between SUVs weighing 3,500 lbs. and cars, the car driver is more than 4X more likely to be killed, and if the SUV weighs over 5,000 lbs the car driver is 9X more likely to be killed, with 16 percent of deaths occurring in car-to-car crashes and 18 percent in car-to-truck crashes.<47> Recent studies find about 75 percent of two-vehicle fatalities involve a truck, and about half these fatalities involve a side-impact crash. Risk to the driver of the other vehicle is almost 10 times higher when the vehicle is a one ton pickup compared to an imported car. And a 2003 Transportation Research Board study show greater safety disparities among vehicles of differing price, country of origin, and quality than among vehicles of different size and weight.<48> These more recent studies tend to discount the importance of vehicle mass to traffic safety, pointing instead to the quality of engineering design as the primary factor.<49>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy#Effect_on_traffic_safety


Have you anything to add?

[phantom power]

1. In what respect, charlie?

[Leo 9]

7. That bit from wiki was a bit of a jumble.

I was in a hurry and needed to print up whatever I could on the issue of higher fuel efficiency standards and safety.

I was hoping someone might respond with some things showing how higher fuel efficiency standards do not necessarily decrease safety.


Here's a better bit of an article on that.


Raising CAFE Standards Was Obama's Only Near-Term Choice
by Meteor Blades

- Sun May 24, 2009 at 02:29:28 PM PDT

snip

More Dead on the Road?

Safety is something else. It’s true, as ROBERT E. GRADY, wrote in his Light Cars Are Dangerous Cars in The Wall Street Journal Friday, the National Research Council did a 2002 study estimating that 1300 to 2600 extra auto deaths occurred in 1993 because cars weren’t as heavy on average as they were in 1976.

But critics of the report say times have changed and are continuing to do so, making the weight issue irrelevant to the safety claim.

One of those is Robert Hall, professor emeritus of operations management at Indiana University. In 2005, he told Rob Chapman at the Center for Auto Safety:

"In the last 40 years ... auto racing speeds have increased, yet deaths have decreased significantly while the weights of the vehicles have gone down progressively. Why? Crushable fronts that absorb impact, 'tubs' that shelter drivers after the entire car has disintegrated, a relocation of the front axle and, yes, crash bags. In this case, lighter is markedly safer."

Daniel L. Green wrote a "Dissent on Safety Issues" to the National Research Council's 2002 report, in which he states: "There is no fundamental scientific reason why decreasing the mass of all vehicles must result in more injuries and fatalities." With Sanjana Ahmad, Greene also wrote The Effect of Fuel Economy on Automobile Safety: A Reexamination.

That’s something O’Grady doesn’t mention. Perhaps it was too hard to dig out. But you would think, if he really wanted to tell the whole story rather than make a propaganda point, he could find an article in the Wall Street Journal headlined "Crash course: How U.S. shifted gears to find small cars can be safe, too" and published in 2005:

"There's now a credible opposing view to what used to be the only view," says David L. Greene, a research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Department of Energy research lab. A paper he co-authored in March, looking at car-crash fatality rates from 1966 to 2002, found no statistically significant relationship between fuel economy and increased traffic fatalities. Mr. Greene says that previous research that did find a correlation studied only the immediate years after fuel-economy reform when weight drops were most significant. But studied over a longer period, that correlation disappears, he says.

For years, the accepted wisdom in the car industry held that, all things being equal, heavier vehicles are always safer when two vehicles crash. New studies highlight how other factors -- including a car's size, body design and advanced technology -- can do much to counteract the weight issue.

The newer studies also have homed in on the downside of weight: While a heavy vehicle protects its occupants in an accident, it inflicts more damage to those it hits. That means reducing the weight of the biggest vehicles could yield dividends in both fuel consumption and safety.

As Chapman writes:

There has been a recurring contention that heavier vehicles are safer. But even the experts disagree on that point. The more important question is whether lighter-weight vehicles can be made to be as safe as heavier ones. The evidence suggests they can be.

snip

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/24/735026/-Raising-CAFE-Standards-Was-Obamas-Only-Near-Term-Choice


So, do you have anything to add?

[Massacure]

2. Maybe we should just ban 5000 lbs SUVs.

Or maybe not. Maybe we should just require a commercial drivers license for vehicles weighing more than 5000 lbs.

[kristopher]

4. ALL licenses for autos should be to the standards of a commercial license.

I didn't read the article at the OP but if it didn't factor in driver competence and training it isn't looking at the low hanging fruit on the safety tree.

[kirby]

3. Nothing is risk free...

People need to accept risk. Driving is not a risk free activity.

Everyone could drive a reinforced Tank and be safer, but the planet would suffer. Everyone could have a government monitored video camera installed in their homes and domestic violence would be reduced. All cell phone usage could be banned from all vehicles and accidents would be reduced. Eight hours of sleep per night could be mandated and accidents would be reduced.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Mini vs Excursion

People are more inclined to push the limits if they feel safe - in a Mini, with your arse 10 inches from the road, you don't feel so safe, so take less risks (That, and there's a lot better driver feedback from the car).

I recall a theory - I forget whose - that if cars were made of cardboard and had a big spike sticking out of the steering wheel, accidents would drop to almost 0 overnight.

[Nihil]

6. There's a lot of truth in that ...

> if cars were made of cardboard and had a big spike sticking out
> of the steering wheel, accidents would drop to almost 0 overnight.

I think that most of the recent trend for total immersion airbags
(steering wheel, screen bars, side pillar, seats) has made things
*worse* as the driver now feels so insulated from the effects of
their actions that they do not pay sufficient attention. This is
reinforced by the fact that many more drivers involved in highway
speed (>60mph) accidents are not just surviving but walking away.

By all means keep the seat belts & headrests - and even the front
shelf air-bag for the front passenger - but please ditch the rest
of the automated safety cocoon so that the responsibility for
getting yourself safely from point A to point B no longer lies in
the fuzzy world between marketing & manufacture but in the place
where it belongs: with the person in the driving seat.

:rant: