In the year 2000, NZ road safety targets were set for a reduction in social cost of 15.5 percent associated with improvements in crashworthiness, which is a measure of the occupant protection of the light vehicle fleet. Since that document was produced, new estimates of crashworthiness have become available allowing a more accurate projection. This paper describes a methodology for projecting changes in casualty rates associated with passive safety features, including the effects of two potential interventions: restrictions on the importation of cars into New Zealand and restriction of government fleet vehicles to those with superior crashworthiness. Compared to the quite large social cost reduction of about 22 percent expected to occur largely due to improvements in the crashworthiness of the fleet over time, these additional interventions were predicted to yield fairly modest savings. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E214057. Printed volume contains peer-reviewed papers. CD-ROM contains submitted papers.
Samenvatting