Within any country's national vehicle stock there will be a number of vehicles which, either through their design or age, will not offer good protection to the occupants in the event of a collision. This study describes the development and application of a safety performance indicator (SPI) forthe safety level of a country's vehicle fleet due to the characteristics of the vehicles it consists of. Two safety characteristics of vehicles were taken into account: vehicle age and EuroNCAP score. The use of EuroNCAP scores limited us to looking at passenger cars only. The SPIs were developed with three main objectives in mind. Firstly, they should assess the differences in EU Member States in terms of the safety of the vehicle fleet. Secondly, they should provide a method for benchmarking, by determining the 'safest' fleet. Thirdly, they should highlight best practice in vehicle safety performance for the EU as a whole. The developed SPI was applied tothe data obtained from five EU member states: Germany, Greece, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom (UK). The data included vehicle type, make, model and year of first registration, as it stood in 2003. Country SPI scores show great differences. This is mainly due to differences in average passenger car ages between the countries, but they also result from differences in average overall fleet EuroNCAP scores. The best performing country was found to be the UK, with a SPI score equal to six times that of the worst performing country, Latvia.
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