A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study of the relation between vehicle weight (a proxy for fuel economy) and passenger safety shows that there is a relation, but current regulatory structures could be altered to reduce the impact of reducing vehicle weights to achieve fuel economy goals. Reducing the entire fleet's weight by 100 lbs. would cause a rise in deaths disproportionately among passengers of the lightest vehicles. However, if fuel economy standards were changed so that they were indexed to vehicle weight and "leveled" for the heaviest vehicles, would encourage weight reductions in the heaviest vehicles, their disproportionately high fatality rate for passengers in cars with which they collide would be reduced. This dovetails with earlier findings that the marginal increase in safety for occupants of extremely heavy vehicles is more than offset by the rise in fatalities among occupants of vehicles with which they crash. A copy of the study can be found at www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/regrev/evaluate/pdf/809662.pdf.
Abstract