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Designing cars to better protect pedestrians
SIGNIFICANT cuts could be made in the pedestrian road toll if Australia tightened its design rules for new cars, say researchers at Adelaide University’s Centre for Automotive Safety Research.
They wants the country to adopt design regulations similar to those being introduced in Europe and calculate that such a move could prevent the death of about 28 pedestrians annually and reduce pedestrian injuries by more than 2000.
Their findings have just been published in a report: "Benefits for Australia of the introduction of an ADR (Australian Design Rule) on pedestrian protection".
The report says introducing ADRs is complex and previous Australian governments have preferred to avoid regulatory interventions in favour of the market to achieve safety objectives. But the report claims there is no evidence that the market forces are working to achieve better pedestrian protection and that the current fleet of new Australian cars are "inferior" to the new fleets being introduced in Europe.
The report says both Europe and Japan started to introduce pedestrian design regulations for new cars in 2006. Europe will have even stricter regulations from 2011.
It says the current regulations outline a car’s expected performance if it hits a child’s head or the lower limbs of an adult. The updated regulations in 2011 will cover mandatory use of "brake assist" technology.
The report says if such regulations were applied to Australia, not only would deaths and injuries be reduced but that the country could expect associated savings in crash costs of about $385 million a year.
