Photo credit: Matthew Raifman
UC Berkeley SafeTREC has released a new interactive final report by transportation safety researcher Matthew Raifman and research data analyst Amalia Stahl for the research project, "Safety Impacts of Vehicle Weight on Vulnerable Road Users", funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety.
As with the rest of the nation, the vehicles on the road in California are changing. With the transition from sedans to SUVs, California’s vehicle fleet is getting larger and heavier. The share of fatalities that are vulnerable road users is also changing, as more pedestrians and bicyclists are struck on our roads.
The aim of this project is to combine Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) vehicle registration data from the past decade with Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data on fatal crashes to explore if larger vehicles are involved in more fatal vulnerable road user (VRU) crashes per registered vehicle than smaller vehicles. These concerns are built on existing data demonstrating that larger, heavier vehicles are significantly more likely to kill pedestrians in the event of a crash.
In the final interactive report "Bigger vehicles, bigger problems?", Raifman and Stahl explore data on how California’s vehicle fleet and vulnerable road user traffic fatalities are changing over time in urban regions. By examining California DMV car registration data from 2014-2023, they found that cars are generally getting heavier, with 2023 being the first year where people are buying more SUVs and pickup trucks than sedans.
Raifman and Stahl also found that heavier vehicles generally had higher rates of VRU fatalities in urban areas, with two exceptions: SUVs have lower VRU fatality rates than sedans, and coupes have higher VRU fatality rates than other small, similarly-weighted cars.
They identify factors requiring additional analyses in future studies, such as identifying where vehicles are registered and how much they are driven, adjusting for cars that have technological safety features, and analyzing fatal and serious injury crashes. This study only analyzed fatal crashes listed in FARS due to limitations in Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) data.
View the full report in the interactive webpage "Bigger vehicles, bigger problems".
Funding for this program is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).