Accident involvement and injury rates for small cars in Japan

✍ Scribed by F.T. Sparrow

• Book ID: 102977433
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 730 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-4575
• DOI: 10.1016/0001-4575(85)90095-8

✦ Synopsis

A comparison of recent U.S. and Japanese small car accident and injury' statistics indicates that the two countries have had dramatically differing experience with such cars. In Japan, for the years 1980, 1981. and 1982, while such cars are involved in more accidents per vehicle or per vehicle kilometer traveled than larger cars, there is a lower likelihood of a fatality if an accident occurs. The lower fatality conditional likelihood more than offsets the higher chance of an accident in 1981 and 1982, resulting in small cars having lower fatality rates per unit of exposure than larger vehicles in those years. The difference is tentatively attributed to the direct and indirect impact of the lower speed limits (80 vs 100 kmh) for such cars in Japan, as well as the greater caution drivers of such vehicles exhibit, as evidenced by the fact that small car drivers cause a significantly lower percent of the accidents they are involved in than larger cars.

The impact of downsizing the U.S. vehicle fleet upon accidents and injuries has been a topic of great concern to auto safety researchers for the last 20 years. The changing nature of the conclusions reached can be attributed to both changes in the data itself and the increasingly sophisticated nature of the analyses performed. At the present time, the following statements characterize current, but hardly consensus, conclusions reached by those active in the field. Unless indicated by a parenthetical comment following the citation, the author's results support the stated conclusion.

A. Given that an accident takes place, the likelihood of an injury/fatality is greater in a small car than a large one [