This study was conducted in response to a congressional mandate, contained in the Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001 (Public Law 106–346), which required the U.S. Department of Transportation to fund a study by the National Academy of Sciences on whether the static stability factor is a scientifically valid measurement that presents practical, useful information to the public, including a comparison of the static stability factor test versus a test with rollover metrics based on dynamic driving conditions that may induce rollover events. In response to a request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Research Council (NRC) formed a committee of 13 members under the leadership of David Wormley, Dean of the College of Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Panel members have expertise in the following areas: mechanical engineering and vehicle dynamics; vehicle safety and testing; vehicle control systems; roadway and roadside design; statistics, econometrics, and data analysis; risk assessment and communication; public policy; consumer information; and human factors and driver behaviour. The committee met four times between April and October 2001. The first two meetings were devoted primarily to information gathering; details of invited presentations and participation in the open discussions are given in Appendix B. Additional information-gathering activities undertaken by committee members included visits to the Consumers Union Vehicle Test Facility in East Haddam, Connecticut, and site visits to Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler facilities in the Detroit area (see Appendix B). The third and fourth committee meetings were devoted to deliberative discussions and preparation of the committee’s final report. An interim report, issued in July 2001, presented the committee’s preliminary findings and identified outstanding issues to be addressed during the remainder of the study. To expedite the study process, the committee divided into three groups, each of which assumed primary responsibility for information gathering and analyses in one of the major subject areas of the study — vehicle dynamics, statistics and data analysis, and consumer information. Contributions from each of the working groups were used by the committee as a whole to develop this consensus report. (Author/publisher)
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