Featured How BEV's may be dangerous to smaller lighter vehicles is an accident

Nope, never have driven a Mini but I often look at what they have as one side of me likes small cars (but then I go on rants about how I need a minivan). My last few cars were around 2,000 lbs or less, including an air cooled Beetle.

Perfect response and light car cornering would be a great pair together. Any road out of town here has a set of tight hairpin switchbacks, which don't feel the same in a big heavy car to me. Usually I can preemtively step on the accelerator before I need to accelerate and still get the accleration I want when I want it. However, I can't preemtively make the car feel lighter going around a corner.

What really feels different is the weight distribution. A lot of light cars put a huge percent of the weight over the drive wheels making them feel almost like they had AWD in the snow, to me at least. At least I can boast about the time I pulled a Ford Expedition out of a driveway with my 1985 VW Golf. More modern cars are much more closer to 50/50 weight distributions making FWD or RWD not feel like they used to.

 

The traffic fatality rate increase over the past several years has been too quick and too large to be explained by the slow long-term increase in vehicle weights. The road fleet didn't change anywhere near that much in just a few years.

The shift to more pickups and SUVs, both heavier and originally subjected to much weaker crash safety and crash compatibility regulations than passenger cars, beginning in the mid-1990s, better explains a decade-long 'pause' in the longer term trend towards lower traffic fatalities. Back then, very many people confused 'killing the other guy' (in a smaller vehicle) as evidence that their heavier vehicle was safer, when the statistics showed otherwise. For vehicles of that era, in solo crashes and similar-weight crashes, the heavier vehicles were deadlier because of their exemptions from passenger safety standards. But they killed so many people in mis-match collisions with lighter passenger cars that customers mistook them as safer, when equally severe crashes in similar-weight light cars meeting passenger safety regulations were resulting in everyone surviving.

Since then, safety requirements for most SUVs and trucks have been sharply tightened to match cars, and light car designs have changed to better protect occupants when struck by taller heavier vehicles.

The fatality rate increase the past few years is more likely the result of de-policing (from the Pandemic and responses to the George Floyd murder), increasing driver aggressiveness and road rage over (likely also linked to the Pandemic), and ever increasing cockpit distractions, especially from those little hand-held screen thingies.

I would also try to blame the increasing abuse of driver assist systems, which too many treat as 'self driving' systems allowing them to reduce their road attention, but am not seeing sufficient data or expert commentaries to support that opinion. Yet.


This chart ends before the Pandemic, but the associated article now includes figures up to 2022:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

 

I took the 2023 EPA test car database, eliminated the duplicates, sorted by weight, and here they are:



Eventually, I'll add more lines for ICE, hybrid, and BEVs. But I noticed some Tesla models were not in the 2023 file ... which happens when manufacturers are slow to send in an entry. For a typical industry survey, I would use 2022 that is now 'closed.'

Bob Wilson

 

That would be easier to read as an absolute numeric number each

 

What units are the counts in? Years, numbers tested, ???

 

The X-axis are unique test vehicle. I scrubbed the duplicates because many test vehicles are subject to more than one protocol.

Although I noticed the absence of one Tesla model, it looks like the 9,000 lb Hummer was not in the 2023 database.

Bob Wilson

 

It would be more useful to see the x axis weighted by sales volume, but finding the necessary data would be considerably more difficult.

 

The Hummer EV is likely exempt from EPA testing, like 2500+ class trucks and vans.
Of the ICE models, only the H3 has a mpg rating.

 

+1

This is exactly right. The low in terms of traffic fatalities per capita and per vmt was in 2014. vehicles were close to as heavy then.

Covid seems to be a heavy driver of the increase. 2019 was almost as low as 2014, with some increase that could easily be traced to higher vmt. 2020 was an inflection point with many fewer miles traveled by a big increase in traffic fatalities. I doubt lax police enforcement has had much to do with it, but more aggressive driving, more distracted driving, and older less safe vehicles staying on the road.

So far the data shows the oposite. newer vehicles with driver assistance are less likely to be involved in accidents. Those distracted in non assisted cars are much more dangerous, but the systems need to improve.

 

When we are talking about small numbers - the jump from 1.08 to 1.37 fatalities per 100 million miles (2014 low to 2021 post low peak) down from 3.35 in 1980, we are talking about small numbers of drivers. Most drunks and distracted drivers do not cause fatalities. Ofcourse these are statistical results not individual.

Studies say that if the warnings are too intrusive drivers turn them off, so the safety does not increase. The press has sensationalized the fatalities in driver assit systems. Statistically these are much lower than in vehicles without the systems, but it could be that the vehicles are just newer and safer.

 

Or drivers that select vehicles with such systems are more conscious of the investment they are making and the need to protect it. I drive at least 90% of my 50%+ Interstate miles with assists fully on. I bought the car I did for those assists.

 

((1.37 - 1.08)/(1e^8 miles)) * 3.26x10^12 miles driven in 2022 = 9,450 extra deaths in a single year. Maybe some call that a small number, but if those very same deaths were associated with firearms instead of motor vehicles, others would be calling them epidemic.

Yes, the press is good at sensationalism and hyperbole, while ignoring greater but less interesting or unusual problems.

Have those statistics addressed the recent large uptick in Tesla AP crashes described in the (admittedly slightly sensationalistic) article I linked last week?:
WaPo: 17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot
Tesla’s driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, has been involved in far more crashes than previously reported

There is also a selection bias issue that needs to be better addressed:
"Autopilot, largely a highway system, operates in a less complex environment than the range of situations experienced by a typical road user."
It needs to be compared to humans in the same less complex conditions, not against the full universe of humans in all weather, all roads, and all conditions that include the many more difficult circumstances that Autopilot can't handle.

Note also the next article linked in that thread, two posts, about AP deactivating a moment before numerous crashes, possibly (we don't seem to know yet) biasing Tesla's claimed statistics.

I have little doubt that, properly used, these systems do improve safety. My concern is about drivers allowing their expectations to get ahead of technical reality, mentally disengaging from their driving responsibilities and turning it over to systems not yet qualified for it. The human nature to do so is very strong.

 

In addition to the link in the above read which reminds readers,

it's important to recognize there are now millions more cars with safety avoidance features. The raw fact that there are a bunch more accidents is meaningless. The author of the read could have pointed that out - but then it would defeat the drama that the writer is trying to invoke.
Motorcycle death involved w/ tesla (or any other car - w/or w/out safety features)?? No indication of whether the biker slamed into it or visa versa? Yea - lots of potential for skewing data there. Could be true - or not.
"Shocking Death toll" might just as well be translated encouraging death toll .... because data is insufficient .
.

 

Small numbers as a very low percentage of driver and very low percentage of miles are part of accidents. From the 2021 statistics (2022 is lower) the fatalities were 0.00000137% for each vmt, in 2014 the low it was
0.00000108% for each vmt. There are 7 not 1 year between these dates. So no it did not jump that much and much of the jump was a rise in miles traveled. The big spike in danger was between 2019 and 2020, but people drove fewer miles in 2020. The odds of an individual driver getting in a fatality is very low according to these statistics.

There is also a selection bias issue that needs to be better addressed:
"Autopilot, largely a highway system, operates in a less complex environment than the range of situations experienced by a typical road user."
It needs to be compared to humans in the same less complex conditions, not against the full universe of humans in all weather, all roads, and all conditions that include the many more difficult circumstances that Autopilot can't handle.[/quote]
Yes tesla's are much safer than the average car according to the statistics. That is whether or not you blaime the driver or the system (system should be better but drivers need to pay attention). As Mike noted some of it may be people that buy the systems are safer, or it may be that newer vehicles are safer. We can't determine that yet.

With every safety system there is regression to the mean. Whether it is anti lock brakes, awd, or air bags, they do not save the percentage of people because drivers get more careless. That does not mean that things aren't safer. Fatalities dropped from 3 per hundred million vmt in 1980 to 1.35 last year. Better driver training could get it much lower though.

 

Late to the thread....what about the latest Chevy EV pickup Silverado, that weighs 8500lbs and has 500HP... I can already see them in ditches along the highways, and shooting off at traffic lights, killing people and other drivers as their social-media-distracted drivers, take off for the moon with a tank.
And...tire manufactures are looking forward to the money they will make with all the tires consumed in half the time with vehicles this heavy. (and the related particle pollution)

 

Tire pollution. That's a new one to me, but makes sense.

 

I have read somewhere and heard from a friend that works in the automotive industry in the EU (sorry if I cannot be more specific for both statements), that is already raising questions both in consumers that have their OEM tires wear away incredibly fast, as well as government and regulatory bodies that see the increase in particulate from tires increasing and becoming sooner or later a problem.

 

The difference between a 3000 lbs and 4000 lbs is minimal, almost non-existent.
I am all for charging vehicles by weight and mileage. As long as the weight factor is done by actual damage caused and not perceived.