Trends in Australian vehicle crashworthiness by year of vehicle manufacture within vehicle market groups.

This paper measures trends in the crashworthiness of the Australian passenger vehicle fleet by year of vehicle manufacture within four market groups (small cars, medium cars, large cars, and 4 wheel drive vehicles). Crashworthiness is defined here as the risk of death or hospitalisation of a vehicle's driver given involvement in a crash and is estimated from police reported crash data on the injury status of 1.4 million vehicle drivers from 3 Australian states over the period 1987 to 1998. Results demonstrated clearly different trends in vehicle crashworthiness by year of manufacture from 1982 to 1998 between different vehicle market sectors of the Australian vehicle fleet, particularly for small and medium size vehicles.