4WDs – The Killers in our Midst?
Do the anti-4WD claims really stack up?
In this report, we look behind the histrionics and investigate whether 4WDs deserve the pasting they get in the popular press. One in five new vehicle purchases is a 4WD, so plenty of people like them. And those who don’t get their say, via the media. Who’s right?
A Bit on the Side
Buying a new car? Always tick the box for side airbags or curtain airbags. Here’s why
People involved in side impact collisions are three times more likely to suffer traumatic brain injury than people in head-on crashes.
Side impacts are far more likely to cause irreversible brain damage, even though side impact speed is often lower. “Half of all fatal accidents occur at an impact speed of less than 55km/h,” Australian road safety expert Michael Paine told the World Health Organisation in Sydney recently. Here’s why:
In a frontal crash there is inevitably at least 1.5 metres of metal structure that can be tuned to absorb the impact by deforming in a controlled way. Think of it as the crash mitigation equivalent of a stack of mattresses strapped in front of you. Additionally, a big, fat airbag can be fitted between you and the windscreen. These technologies act in concert to slow your head’s deceleration, and hence the loads experienced by your brain, during a crash. The crash performance requirements mandated by Australian Design Rule 69 mean there’s really no option for manufacturers other than to fit front airbags, at least for the driver.
At the side, however, there is likely to be a space of only 20cm or so comprising mostly air and a thin pane of very hard glass. Its capacity to absorb impact is negligible, which explains why side impacts at very mundane speeds like 50km/h are often fatal. When the car hits a tree or power pole, for example, it intrudes inside the cabin, too, offering almost no ‘give’.
Extreme loads on impact don’t allow much scope for quality of life afterwards (if there’s an ‘afterwards’) and the typical customer tends to be a young male. Trauma nursing specialist Julie Evans says she has lost count of the number of young brain-injured victims who she’s seen saved in the John Hunter hospital, where she works as a trauma co-ordinator, who subsequently wait there until a bed becomes available in a nursing home, on which they will spend the rest of their lives. “Unfortunately, brains often don’t get much better,” she says.
Side airbags and so-called ‘curtain’ airbags, which cover the full length of the side glass to protect even rear passengers’ heads, deploy about eight milliseconds after the collision. At around 15 or 20 milliseconds they are fully inflated, offering critical padding at just the right time to reduce the loads on victims’ heads.
The average age of Australian cars is around 10 years. There are no regulations mandating the fitting of side airbags to new cars. That means it will probably take well over 15 years before most Australian vehicle occupants benefit from this fairly elite and potentially brain-saving technology.
A Load of Scrap
Crushing hoons’ cars not enough: now Her Majesty’s pleasure is just two burnouts away…
NSW Premier Morris Iemma and Police Minister David Campbell sure can sniff a good PR opportunity. Rather than do something effective, such as remove roadside obstacles (collisions with which cause one-third of road death, the same as speeding, allegedly) or crack-down on unlicensed drivers (one in 10 among us, according to official estimates) they announced last week penalties for burnouts will treble under tough new (PR-driven) laws, and license disqualification will increase to 12 months maximum.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of a new policy to crush hoons’ cars in crash experiments in the RTA’s Crashlab facility, and possibly post the video footage on YouTube (though the Government is “still working on the details”).
Iemma and Campbell, who obviously fail to grasp road safety’s fundamentals, are on a roll. Obviously they retain great press secretaries, who have convinced the media there is a clear link between burnouts and street racing, although there’s no evidence burnouts are associated with much road trauma at all. Most burnouts occur when stopped or at walking pace. Street racing, though hard to prove in court, is clearly far more dangerous as it involves excessive speed and (often) a failure to observe ‘give way’ requirements at intersections – sometimes with tragic consequences.
This is not an apology for those who choose a public street of car park to perform burnouts. Burnouts are anti-social. But surely adequate enforcement provisions were in place already, such as negligent driving, or ‘manner dangerous’ charges. Why tar and feather a ‘burnouter’ when all an unlicensed driver gets is a slap on the wrist?
Surely, the punishment should fit the crime. Gaol sentences are rarely handed down to recidivist unlicensed drivers, drivers of unregistered vehicles, or those who flee police pursuit – unless somebody is killed or injured in the process. You have to ask yourself if a burnout is worse than these acts.
Speed Kills….
But are we really sure…?
Actually, we’re not. Crash data is collected primarily by police, and most often it is general duties officers with no real crash investigation training who attend crashes. Investigation into crash causality is not a high priority for the officers who attend most crashes.
What’s not debatable is that it is very dangerous to drive at a speed excessive to the prevailing conditions, or beyond the driver’s or car’s ability. The determination of ‘excessive speed’ is quite complex, yet it is a decision drivers must consider continuously. It is over-simplistic to suggest that exceeding the posted limit is always ‘excessive’ and that never exceeding the limit isn’t.
The term ‘speed’ has itself become so demonised and semantically promiscuous that its use defies common sense. It is commonly used to mean both ‘speeding’ and ‘excessive speed’, making meaningful debate impossible.
In truth, all crashes are speed related … because cars that are stopped cannot crash. Speed is an intrinsic feature of transport.
Speeding implies driving faster than the posted limit. Whether or not this is actually dangerous depends on many factors, including whether the posted limits are appropriate.
The only term that relates directly to road safety is ‘excessive speed’, which means driving dangerously fast. Our regulators know this, but include in their definitions of ‘excessive speed’ such bizarre phenomena as ‘trucks jacknifing’ (actually caused by brake and steering imbalances, not excessive speed) plus a raft of non-expert opinion that predisposes those at the coalface of crash reporting to nominate ‘excessive speed’ and thus promote current statistical theory.
States of Shock
Victoria Queensland & WA road safety policies: disaster areas
At least three Australian states are failing to live up to their road regulators’ ‘steady as she goes, it’s all under control’ rhetoric.
Stop Police!
Why high-speed police pursuits have to stop
Every year there are more than 2000 police pursuits in NSW, Australia’s most populous state – more than 40 each week; more than six a day. They account for one per cent of the road toll. One in twelve of these chaotic, unpredictable events ends in a crash, but only one in eight happens because the driver is suspected of a criminal offence.
SUVs Getting Safer
4WDs remain a soft target, but the poor safety claims appear to lack substance, a new report claims
The Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) has investigated the crash-involvement of 4WDs on Australian and New Zealand Roads up until 2003, and the findings pretty much repudiate claims that SUVs are merely battering rams with power steering and air conditioning. 4WDs have become dramatically safer, it seems.
KEY FINDING 1: “The increase in 4WD vehicles on the road does not seem to be associated with increases in the proportion of car drivers being killed in multi-vehicle crashes.”
In 1992, 4WD sales represented about 10 per cent of all new-vehicle sales. A decade later, in 2003, the proportion of 4WDs being sold had practically doubled, to almost 20 per cent. The report then examined the proportion of car drivers killed in multi-vehicle crashes in Victoria. They dropped from more than 60 per cent in 1992 to around 40 per cent in 2003. It seems the rise of the 4WD on Australian roads has not led to a tsunami of car drivers being killed. What has increased is the proportion of car drivers being killed in single-vehicle crashes – not a 4WD-related problem.
KEY FINDING 2: “Rollover crashes are a very important and very dangerous crash type for 4WD drivers.”
There’s no getting around it: 4WDs roll over more often than cars, and a rollover is a very bad event to be in. Using data from Vic, NSW, Qld, WA and NZ spanning the period 1999-2003, it transpires that 4WDs accounted for six per cent of seriously injured drivers. Yet they also accounted for 18 per cent of drivers seriously injured in rollovers. 4WDs accounted for just five per cent of fatally injured drivers, but represented 19 per cent of the drivers killed in rollovers. When you look at all reported crashes, 4WDs account for five per cent – but they also represent 11 per cent of rollovers. In short, 4WDs are twice as likely to roll over, three times more likely to seriously injure you in a rollover, and almost four times as likely to kill you in a rollover. The report also found there was “little to distinguish between the rollover rates of small, medium and large 4WDs”. Additionally, the rollover problem is significantly more serious on high-speed roads, as well as for young drivers.
KEY FINDING 3: “Over all crash types combined, large and medium 4WDs have good crashworthiness.”
This statement from the report underplays the reality of the findings. What was found was that large 4WDs had the best overall crashworthiness, followed by medium 4WDs.
The following table summarises the findings the crashworthiness rating quoted is the number of serious injuries per 100 crash-involved drivers (the bigger numbers represent the least crashworthy vehicles).
The Great Easter Egg Hunt
We’ve got a fantastic competition for you! The Easter Bunny has hopped around the Private Fleet site and hidden a load of easter eggs for you to find. Find one of these eggs and that will put you in the draw for $1,000 worth of hotel vouchers redeemable at locations around Australia & NZ (see www.stamford.com.au for details)
It’s simple enough – find an egg hiding at the bottom of one of the Private Fleet web pages, make a note of the special code you see next to the egg, return to this page & enter the code into the entry form below together with your details and you’re in the draw!
What Drives Your Car
There’s probably only one thing that all cars have in common, four road wheels. But exactly which wheels move the car along the road vary widely. ‘RWD’, ‘FWD’, ‘4WD’, and ‘AWD’ are all drive systems that make life confusing! Over the next couple of issues of The Private Fleet Newsletter we’ll explain the differences. This month we’ll look at front wheel drive (FWD) versus rear wheel drive (RWD) and next month we’ll look at four wheel drive and all wheel drive.
Rear Wheel Drive
E10 Furore
The E10 debate rages on. Last month we revealed in the Private Fleet Newsletter article that standard unleaded petrol is to be withdrawn from sale in NSW. It now seems likely that other States will soon follow suit.
Clearly this has hit the motorists’ nerve as we have received an unprecedented response from our readers.
Jim L. from Victoria wrote to the Office of Biofuels in NSW as follows:-
Level 2, 9 Help Street