Passive safety of passenger cars : a pilot-study into the development of a ranking list of passengers. On behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Transport and Public Works.

This report is the English translation of IRRD 491574 (see C 11059). The key objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of constructing a list of individual or grouped types of cars which could be ranked according to passive safety. A ranked listing was drawn up as based on accident data obtained from the Accident Records Registration Division of the Directorate-General of Public Works (AVV/BG). Linked to these data were vehicle data from the vehicle registration numbers of the RDW Department of Roads Transport. Two measures for expressing the passive safety of individual vehicles were developed. One of these (EV) provides an indication of the occupant safety for a certain vehicle model while the other (AV) expresses the degree of injury caused by a certain vehicle model in relationship to other road users. A ranked listing (although provisional) was drawn up of various types of vehicles occurring more than one hundred times in the file. The provisional ranked listing shows a more or less logical progression of EV and AV while also considering the established tie between vehicular mass and the severity of personal injury. Further analysis, both of the previously studied material and of data yet to be gathered, is recommended to make the ranked listing more complete and reliable. For the first part see C 11058 (IRRD 491573).