Evaluation of the Car Safety Enhancements During the Last Three Decades

The objective of this work is to assess the enhancement of new cars (designed in the 2000’s) compared to cars designed in the 1980’s and in the 1990’s. The improvement is evaluated according to two criteria: the involvement rate in an accident and the protection offered to the driver in case of a crash. Within each decade of conception, cars are also defined and evaluated regarding their classes (supermini, small family car, large family car, Mpv and executive). Protection is analyzed through the risk of fatal and severe injuries among drivers involved in a crash. Regarding involvement, as no data on the circulating fleet and on the characteristics of the circulating drivers are available, the involvement rate is estimated by the risk of being responsible for an accident. Logistic regressions were fitted for the two indicators, in order to avoid confounding factors. Data sources consist on the French accident national data base from year 2007 to 2009. This data base gathers all injury accidents occurred each year in France. Information regarding the circumstances of the accident, the vehicles, the people involved and their injury severity are available. Cars designed in the 1980’s, the 1990’s and in the 2000’s were selected, and the class of the cars is assigned for each vehicle. The study is based on a final sample of 97 600 car drivers. Results are given in term of safety benefits with their 95% confidence intervals. The increase or decrease in the risk of being responsible for an injury accident is presented for each category of cars, as well as the risk of being killed or severely injured. Cars are then compared according to their decades of conception and to their classes. The study enlightens the safety improvements made since the 1980’s, in term of risk of being involved in an injury accident but also in term of protection offered by car. The magnitude of the improvement turns up to be dependent on the category of the car. The sample used is mostly European but the methodology could be applied on different countries accident databases. This study provides an evaluation of car protection on recent accident and also brings new data on involvement risk according both to the conception and class of the cars.