Welcome to the
UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center Newsletter

This Issue:

 Safety and the SUV
 

In this edition of the Traffic Safety Center newsletter, we look how the rise of sport utility vehicles as mass market consumer items (versus specialty vehicles sprinkled in the fleet) has affected road safety and is changing traffic safety research knowledge and practices.

This development is worth studying because it constitutes a tragedy of the commons of a sort, where highways are the commons and individual-minded drivers are not concerned about what happens to the collective users on the road. Also, SUVs are a salient part of our popular culture right now and will remain so for years to come, even if they continue their recent slump in popularity.

Millions of dollars are spent to promote them, and U.S. consumers have responded by buying them in record numbers. As they and other similar types of vehicles in the light truck class have become more numerous, researchers have been able to gather and analyze new data about how their design poses risks to road users, and to hypothesize about some possible promising responses.

Their rise also illustrates the law of unintended consequences. An achievement like the easy-to-drive, eco-conscious, high-mileage Toyota Prius Hybrid should not have to be at the expense of the safety of those who ride in it because it must share the road with the larger, heavier vehicles ushered in during the age of the SUV. But the policies intended to promote these smaller, efficient vehicles inadvertently encouraged or allowed SUV vehicle types to rapidly increase their share of the market.

At the other extreme, the massive Humvee purchased in the belief it will protect its occupants should not have to do so at the expense of fuel efficiency and the safety of other people on the road.

To better understand these and other questions, this issue of the newsletter presents:

• A history of the policies and cultural attitudes behind the rise of SUVs and light trucks.

• New work by researchers who are collecting and analyzing data in ways to better understand the SUVs' effect on conditions on the roads.

• An analysis of how the data that is collected can be analyzed and improved upon.

• The ambitious "Essuvee" public service campaign, funded as a result of a legal settlement, and one of the most expensive and expansive driver awareness efforts ever.

The three goals underpinning most vehicle regulation over the past few decades, fuel economy, occupant safety, and safety for other road users, do not have to be mutually exclusive.  New technology and innovative policies can bring us closer to all three. How we get there will probably involve some mutual function of market and government forces, similar to what helped shape the world of SUVs we currently inhabit. Traffic safety researchers will have much to contribute and to learn.

This newsletter was created by the UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center (TSC) to disseminate important information on traffic safety topics most relevant to communities in California. The mission of the TSC is to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries through multi-disciplinary collaboration in education, research, and outreach. A main goal of the Center is to make traffic safety information available and accessible to public and private organizations, agencies, and businesses, and to individuals. 

The TSC newsletter is published quarterly. If you'd like to subscribe or unsubscribe to the mailing list, please visit this page of the TSC website.

Editor:
Phyllis Orrick, Publications Director, Institute of Transportation Studies,
510-643-2591

Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.

In This Issue:
 

From the Battlefield to the Soccer Field 
The history of the SUV as a tragedy of the commons


 

Scapegoat Utility Vehicle?
Light trucks dodge the spotlight


 

Tracking the Fallout from the SUV "Arms Race"
A new, wholistic look at old data

A Wooly Mammoth for Teenage Eyes
Ford's public service ads target risky SUV driver behavior
 

The Evolution of the SUV
A Pictorial Timeline


 

List of References

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