Impact on road safety due to the increasing of sports utility and multipurpose vehicles. Impact Assessment of Safety Measures for Vehicles and Road Equipment IMPROVER, Subproject 1 : final report.

Automobile manufacturers are offering a wider range of vehicle models in terms of body configurations. As one part of this, the growing number of Multi-Purpose Vehicles (MPV) and Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) will lead to modifications of the European vehicle fleet. Accompanying this, the safety and environmental performance of these vehicles will not be in line with modern European passenger cars. The objective of this study was to gain insight and understanding of the safety and environmental issues for SUVs and MPVs on the European road network. Although there is a growing presence of SUVs in European traffic, there is a lack of objective analysis to indicate the impact of these SUVs. In this study a general definition was formulated to be able to identify SUVs and MPVs in the M1 class vehicles. Based on this definition sales figures from the EU15 countries, national statistics and in-depth accident cases have been extracted from appropriate databases. The in-depth cases and a detailed analysis of the structural differences provided insight into the structural differences between passenger cars and SUVs. The environmental performance differences were also investigated. (Author/publisher) For the other IMPROVER reports see http://www.bast.de/nn_622282/DE/Publikationen/Download-Berichte/unterse…