Range Rover Evoque SUV, manufactured by Jaguar Land Rover, sits on display during its launch event in London, U.K., 2018.
© Bloomberg Finance LP
Earlier this year it was reported in the U.S. that the “nation’s SUV boom is becoming increasingly deadly” after it was revealed that pedestrian deaths hit a 28-year high in 2018. A new data crunch from British transport data experts shows there may be a similar lethality problem with SUVs in the U.K.
Britain’s Department for Transport (DfT) should be “really concerned that some [car] sizes are twice as likely to kill pedestrians compared to others,” says transport policy advisor Adam Reynolds.
He has worked with other spreadsheet specialists on police crash data made more statistically accessible by Robin Lovelace, a “Big Data” fellow at the Institute for Transport Studies at Leeds University in northern England.
This crash data is collected by the police on the STATS19 form which does not provide information on vehicle types but does give engine capacity, where known. Dr. Lovelace has put the raw crash data into R format, a type of software for statistical computing widely used by data scientists and statisticians. The dataset contains information on crash dates going back to 1979 as well as location, vehicles involved and casualties.
Reynolds says, “further work [is required] to understand if the issue is speed or the issue is size and shape of vehicle.”
He adds: “The DfT should be publishing that analysis and the Driver and Vehicles Standards Agency should be removing dangerous vehicle shapes from the road.”
SUVs are not specifically pinpointed in crash data but, says Reynolds, “it is clear that the cars with 1.8-liter to 2-liter engines have a higher fatality rate, 2% vs. 1.4%, and this is likely to be speed- and size-related.”
More alarming, he stresses, is that the 2-liter to 3-liter category shows a 2.4% fatality rate, and he states this “will be due to larger size and not just speed.”
Reynolds suggests that the DfT and the police should measure pedestrian fatalities by vehicle body shape as well as engine size.
Not currently doing this is “masking a deadly problem created by the car industry marketing and producing taller, heavier vehicles,” argues Reynolds.
“If the data does show that SUVs are twice as deadly, then ownership in urban areas should be discouraged and use within cities curtailed with a ban on new sales.”
Graphic from GHSA’s annual “Spotlight on Highway Safety” 2019.
GHSA
In February, the U.S. Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) reported that the number of pedestrian deaths involving SUVs increased by 50% from 2013 through 2017, while the number of pedestrian deaths attributed to motorists driving smaller cars increased by 30% over that same period.
GHSA’s annual “Spotlight on Highway Safety” is based on preliminary data provided by State Highway Safety Offices and was authored by independent consultant Richard Retting.
“Crossing the street should not be a death sentence,” said Retting in the report.
