Rollover and serious driver injury differences among various utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and passenger car groups

Reinfurt, D. W.; Li, L. K.; Popkin, C. L.; O'Neill, B.; Burchman, P. F.; Wells, J. K.

Affiliations

¹University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

²The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Washington, D.C.

Abstract

Rollover tendencies and resulting serious driver injuries are compared for utility vehicles, half-ton pickup trucks, and passenger cars using crash data from North Carolina (1973-78) and the Fatal Accident Reporting System (1978-79). In virtually every category of comparison -- crash involvement rates (particularly single vehicle), serious driver injuries, rate of rollover, serious driver injuries in rollover crashes, serious injuries for belted and unbelted drivers -- the Jeep CJ-5 had the least favorable results of the vehicles studied followed by the pre-1978 Ford Bronco. The Toyota and Datsun pickups had results that were similar to those of the Chevrolet Blazer and were between the Jeep CJ-5 and Ford Bronco and the Ford and Chevrolet pickup trucks. For passenger cars the crash and injury rates were highest for the subcompacts and decreased with increasing wheelbase length. Finally, the effect of driver age is examined.

Cited By (3)

Year	Entry
1986	Waller JA. Discussion of "The effects of alcohol on driver decision making and risk taking" In discussion of: In: 30th Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). October 6, 1986; Montreal, QC.75.
1987	Terhune KW. Light truck safety: an unfolding story. In: 31st Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). September 28-30, 1987; New Orleans, LA.389-407.
1989	Biard R, Cesari D, Bloch J. Rollovers of passenger cars in France. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Technical Conference on Experimental Safety Vehicles (ESV). May 29–June 1, 1989; Göteborg, Sweden.541-553.