---

Coalition for Vehicle Choice in Response to Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Vehicle Weight/Death Rate Study

10 February 1998

Statement of Diane K. Steed Coalition for Vehicle Choice in Response to Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Vehicle Weight/Death Rate Study

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 -- The following is a statement by Diane
K. Steed in response to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Vehicle
Weight/Death Rate Study.

    The jury is in -- bigger is safer.  The IIHS study confirms what most
Americans and what the nation's highway traffic safety agency has concluded
repeatedly. Overall the IIHS study concludes that, "The lightest passenger
cars, pickups, and utility vehicles, which are also the smallest, typically
have the highest death rates, and the heaviest and largest have the lowest."
The IIHS also adds valuable perspective to the recent debate regarding the
safety and compatibility between light trucks and automobiles.

    -- First, and most importantly, the study puts the compatibility issue in
its proper perspective. The report shows that only about 10 percent of all car
occupant deaths occur in crashes with pickups and about 4 percent occur in
crashes with sport utility vehicles. Virtually all of the remaining car
occupant deaths occur in crashes with other cars, big trucks, or single-
vehicle crashes. "Thus, compatibility improvements, even though they're
important, are not panaceas."

    -- Second, driving consumers out of larger vehicles -- particularly light
trucks -- to smaller vehicles won't save lives.  In fact, it could cost lives.
The focus of recent articles on sport utilities leave the impression that
lighter vehicles have higher death rates primarily because they're at a
disadvantage in collisions with heavier vehicles.  The study concludes,
"Wrong. Even when light vehicles are in crashes not involving other vehicles,
they have higher occupant death rates than heavy ones."  The logical
conclusion is that highway deaths would increase if motorists were forced out
of larger vehicles for smaller ones.

    -- Third, while the study does find that car occupants are at higher risk
when hit by a light truck from the side (27:1), those risks are not dissimilar
of a large car hitting a car from the side (20:1).

    The conclusions by IIHS are similar to those from a study released last
year by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).  In that
study, NHTSA found that adding 100 pounds to passenger cars would save more
than 300 lives per year.  The IIHS recommendation that automakers "design
their cars so occupants are safe as possible, without worrying about
incompatibility among cars in crashes" is sound advice to those who would
propose taking larger, safer vehicles away from Americans.

SOURCE  Coalition for Vehicle Choice