01476908

Component

This study aims at indexing crash worthiness and crash aggressivity of 23 major car brands in Florida with consideration of the brand origin. It contributes to the literature by proposing a method for redefining the safety performance of cars by taking into account the cars’ hazardousness imposed to counterpart cars that are involved in the same crashes. A Bayesian hierarchical ordered logistic model was applied to relate the injury severity level of drivers to crash compatibility of car brands. In the models, the authors assume that the driver injury depends on the difference of the striking cars’ aggressivity and the struck cars’ self-protectiveness in two-vehicle crashes with external factors controlled. A total of 17,178 two-vehicle-crash records with 34,356 car involvements in Florida were used in the investigation. The results show that most of the premium cars such as Volvo, Cadillac, Infiniti and Lexus possess excellent crash worthiness and relatively low crash aggressivity. Self-protection abilities of popular car brands such as Ford, Toyota, Honda and Chevrolet vary considerably, but their hazardousness performs similarly and are lower than the average level. European cars perform relatively good self-protection but are also more hazardous to the counterpart cars when crashes occur. Japanese cars show lower crash worthiness and aggressivity than American cars, while South Korean cars are associated with the lowest crash worthiness and mean crash aggressivity.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB20 Safety Data, Analysis and Evaluation.

01470560

13-1754

English

19p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Automobiles by type; Crash severity; Crashworthiness; Highway safety; Multiple vehicle crashes; Traffic crashes; Vehicle safety

Vehicle aggressiveness; Vehicle incompatibility

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-1754

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:25PM