In the year 2000, NZ road safety targets were set for a reduction in social cost of 15.5 per cent associated with improvements in crashworthiness, which is a measure of the occupant protection provided by vehicles in 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, based primarily on projections of the existing crashworthiness trends and thereafter 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 per cent 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. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting