Real World Determinants of Vehicle Safety Performance

Over the last few decades there have been significant improvements in vehicle safety. The average risk of death or serious injury for drivers, or vehicle crashworthiness, in 2022 models reduced by 36 per cent compared to those manufactured in 2002. The introduction of Australian Design Rules (ADRs) that ensure vehicles in the fleet meet specified occupant protection standards, such as the fitment of seat belts, and vehicle safety features such as airbags, can be attributed with much of the improvement, along with the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) who produce consumer information in the form of a star rating system based predominantly on crashworthiness performance in laboratory crash tests.

Whilst real world crashworthiness has improved, vehicles that have the same safety features or perform well in laboratory crash tests, may perform quite differently in the real world. This project will examine determinants of real world safety performance related to vehicle attributes, such as mass and geometry, in combination with an examination of the passenger injury profile using crash data linked to TAC claims data, which has a high level of injury information. Gaps between the safety performance of a vehicle based on the safety feature it has fitted or crash tests it has passed, will be examined to identify where improvements to vehicle crashworthiness can still be made. For example, cars with poor real world crashworthiness may fail significantly in certain crash types, and large differences are often seen between the best performing and worst performing vehicles. The identification of factors affecting real world crash injury outcomes would inform improvement to vehicle safety design.

Main supervisor: Professor Stuart Newstead

Associate supervisor: Dr Angelo D’Elia