From http://www.drive.com.au/news/articl...-new/news/general/2002/03/18/FFXK9ER5XYC.html
4WDs deadly for other road users
By Tim Colebatch, Canberra
The Age
Monday March 18 2002
Collisions involving four-wheel-drive vehicles are nine times more likely to kill other road users than to kill the driver of the 4WD, a report for the Federal Government has found.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau reports that the number of fatal crashes involving 4WDs jumped 85 percent between 1990 and 1998, even though in that time the total number of fatal crashes on the roads fell by 25 percent.
By 1998, 12 percent of all fatal crashes on Australia's roads involved a 4WD, compared with 5 percent just eight years earlier. They caused 212 deaths, or one in every eight road fatalities.
The report, Four Wheel Drive Crashes, along with an earlier bureau report on the danger of bull bars in collisions, raises concerns that the trend to buy tax-favoured 4WDs equipped with bull bars may be increasing Australia's road toll.
The earlier report, Bull Bars and Road Trauma, found there was no clear evidence that bull bars reduced the injuries to occupants of the vehicles that fitted them, but strong evidence that they increased the risks to anyone the vehicle hit.
The new report, based on 1998 data, found that 4WDs were 20 percent more likely than other passenger cars to be involved in fatal collisions. But more importantly, the victims were overwhelmingly people travelling in the vehicles they hit.
Of the 134 people killed in collisions involving 4WDs, only 21 were travelling in the 4WD itself, and only 13 were 4WD drivers. The main risk to 4WD drivers and passengers was of the 4WD rolling over, usually not in a collision, but from the driver drifting off the road.
Sales of 4WD vehicles have soared in recent years thanks, in part, to the 5 percent tariff on them, compared with 15 percent on other cars.
Senator Ron Boswell, parliamentary secretary to Transport Minister John Anderson, called the figures for 4WD crashes "quite staggering".
4WDs deadly for other road users
By Tim Colebatch, Canberra
The Age
Monday March 18 2002
Collisions involving four-wheel-drive vehicles are nine times more likely to kill other road users than to kill the driver of the 4WD, a report for the Federal Government has found.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau reports that the number of fatal crashes involving 4WDs jumped 85 percent between 1990 and 1998, even though in that time the total number of fatal crashes on the roads fell by 25 percent.
By 1998, 12 percent of all fatal crashes on Australia's roads involved a 4WD, compared with 5 percent just eight years earlier. They caused 212 deaths, or one in every eight road fatalities.
The report, Four Wheel Drive Crashes, along with an earlier bureau report on the danger of bull bars in collisions, raises concerns that the trend to buy tax-favoured 4WDs equipped with bull bars may be increasing Australia's road toll.
The earlier report, Bull Bars and Road Trauma, found there was no clear evidence that bull bars reduced the injuries to occupants of the vehicles that fitted them, but strong evidence that they increased the risks to anyone the vehicle hit.
The new report, based on 1998 data, found that 4WDs were 20 percent more likely than other passenger cars to be involved in fatal collisions. But more importantly, the victims were overwhelmingly people travelling in the vehicles they hit.
Of the 134 people killed in collisions involving 4WDs, only 21 were travelling in the 4WD itself, and only 13 were 4WD drivers. The main risk to 4WD drivers and passengers was of the 4WD rolling over, usually not in a collision, but from the driver drifting off the road.
Sales of 4WD vehicles have soared in recent years thanks, in part, to the 5 percent tariff on them, compared with 15 percent on other cars.
Senator Ron Boswell, parliamentary secretary to Transport Minister John Anderson, called the figures for 4WD crashes "quite staggering".
