WHICH VEHICLES ARE MOST PRONE TO ROLLOVERS AND OCCUPANT INJURIES: PASSENGER CARS, VANS, SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES OR PICKUP TRUCKS?

ABSTRACT—With increasing speed limits and more light trucks penetrating the market, concern over rollovers is growing. This paper presents a study of how vehicle platforms influence rollovers and injuries. Specifically, we explore: 1) The rollover intensity of vehicle platforms, given single-vehicle crashes and 2) the severity of the resulting driver injury. A federally maintained NASS-CDS (National Automotive Sampling System-Crashworthiness Data System) database was used for crash analysis. This is a detailed and relatively clean stratified sample of police-reported tow-away crashes nationwide. Rigorous multivariate methods were used to explore the effects of vehicle-platform while controlling for various factors. Specifically, rollover intensity (captured by the number of quarter-turns) was investigated using weighted Poisson and negative binomial models; injury severity (measured on the AIS scale: maximum, critical, severe, serious, moderate, minor and none) was examined using weighted ordered logit models. New insights emerge about the factors that increase rollover intensity and injury severity in real-life crash situations. We found significant differences i