Bigger is … Bigger
Not-so-Smart Car
The item on all the major news outlets today is the new crash test report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Now IIHS does some good work, so I don’t want to slam them. Really, they’re just echoing the culture with this report.
Of course: people in smaller cars don’t fare well in crashes with bigger vehicles. Duh. Neither do motorcyclists, bicyclists or pedestrians.
The approach to safety in this country is virtually all about how to reduce the impact on yourself and your family; rarely on how you might reduce your impact on others.
Perhaps instead of a headline like Small Cars Rate Poorly in New Crash Tests, we could once in a while see one like Larger Vehicles Cause More Serious Injuries and Deaths in Crashes.
Oh, but we knew that already too, didn’t we? I guess we just don’t like to be reminded.
Better yet, how about this headline: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Finds Bicyclists, Pedestrians Have Virtually No Impact on Others.
Posted in Cars, SafetyTags: bicyclists, crash test, crashes, insurance institute for highway safety, pedestrians
17. April 2009 at 1:26 pm :
The vulnerable users crowd propose overlaying an entire separate system of separated facilities to mitigate the hazard of motor vehicles. Practical? A reasonable solution? LOL!
17. April 2009 at 9:26 pm :
IIHS. I think their credibility is pretty low when they claim things like “Ninety-five percent of bicyclists killed in 2006 reportedly weren’t wearing helmets.” (Reference website link above).
That falls BELOW the level of “junk science.” Even given the low level of details available in news stories, it’s easy to see that a much larger fraction of dead cyclists WERE wearing helmets than 5%.
Go ahead, slam them – at least when they do slipshod stories…
17. April 2009 at 9:30 pm :
BTW, in the same article, they trot out the old canard that helmets reduce head injuries by 85% – even the AUTHORS of that study concede that number’s too high.
18. April 2009 at 3:55 pm :
“Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Finds Bicyclists, Pedestrians Have Virtually No Impact on Others”
Love it… I know I’ll be using that in conversation. Nice Post
Rantwick