Safety of city-cars : conflict between ecology, economy, road traffic benefits and safety.

Author(s)
Appel, H. Krabbel, G. & Meissner, T.
Year
Abstract

This paper examines implications of the widespread introduction of a "City-only" compact car, using as examples the prototypes VW Chico and BMW E 1 (both compact cars suitable for city and rural areas) and the Concept study "City-only" car ERI-CAR II. Besides the obvious advantages in ecology, economy and traffic space, there are possibly additional safety advantages in lower accident frequency (lower acceleration), lower accident severity (lower velocity), and lower aggressiveness (lower masses). On the other hand these small and lightweight cars are more vulnerable especially in car-to-car crashes because of larger deformation/intrusions and higher speed variations/accelerations. variations/accelerations. Beside the lower level of "self-protection", there could arise disadvantages from the higher number of these cars overcompensating the space saving of the single subcompact car. (A)

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Publication

Library number
C 6397 (In: C 6392 a S) /91 / IRRD 866324
Source

In: Proceedings of the conference Road safety in Europe, Berlin, Germany, September 30 - October 2, 1992, VTI rapport 380A, Part 1, p. 87-109, 14 ref.

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This publication is one of our other publications, and part of our extensive collection of road safety literature, that also includes the SWOV publications.