Toronto, Ontario — The taller a vehicle, the more likely it is to inflict serious injury to pedestrians in a collision, says a new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
To collect the study’s data, IIHS researchers specifically analyzed pedestrian crashes to develop injury risk curves showing how speed affects crash outcomes.
Through this testing, researchers found that the effect of crash speed on injury risk was magnified for vehicles with taller front ends.
Additionally, compared with risk curves developed using crash data from Europe, where tall passenger vehicles are less common, risk curves for the United States show pedestrians begin to suffer from more serious injuries at lower speeds.
Notably, the data suggests that the 40 kilometre speed limit usually found in residential areas, may be too high when considering pedestrian safety.
To estimate injury risk at different impact speeds, IIHS researchers examined 202 crashes involving pedestrians age 16 or older.
Research also found that regardless of vehicle height, higher speeds were associated with increased risk of injury at all severities.
Notably, pedestrians struck at 40 km/h had a 46 percent chance of sustaining at least a moderate injury, and an 18 percent chance of sustaining a serious injury.
At 56 km/h, the risk of moderate injury increased to 86 percent, with the risk of incurring a serious injury jumping to 67 percent.
IIHS senior statistician and the study’s lead author, Sam Monfort commented that “although SUVs are a growing share of the market in Europe, the passenger vehicle fleet there has long been dominated by cars. In contrast, the majority of passenger vehicles on U.S. roads today are SUVs or pickups. These choices have very real consequences for pedestrian safety.”
To read the full report, click here.
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