Safety Impacts of Vehicle Weight on Vulnerable Road Users
Research Team:
Matthew Raifman
Amalia Stahl
SangHyouk Oum
Funding Organization:
California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS)
Summary:
(Photo credit: Matthew Raifman)
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 Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) data on fatal crashes to explore if larger vehicles are involved in more fatal vulnerable road user crashes per registered vehicle than smaller vehicles.
Map visualizing ten years of fatal VRU crashes in California that have been color coded as urban, suburban, and rural crashes based on the county in which they occured. (Photo: SafeTREC)
Start date: October 1, 2024
Completion date: September 30, 2025
Project resources:
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Bigger vehicles, bigger problems? (September, 2025). In this interactive final report, we explore data on how California’s vehicle fleet and vulnerable road user traffic fatalities are changing over time. We examine these trends statewide for California and specifically in urban-only regions. We also share some of the limitations of working California-specific SWITRS fatality and serious injury data compared to federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) fatality data for vehicle-related analysis.
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).