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January 10, 2003, Open letter to Sam Kazman regarding promotion of SUVs.
Sam Kazman's January 10, 2003, response to the open letter.
January 12, 2003, Letter to Sam Kazman.
Dear Sam Kazman,
It is nice to hear from you and get a chance to understand on what basis you constructed your opinion, even if you did not answer on a single one of the questions I gave you. On your request I will of course copy my answer to the same recipients as my first letter. I think it is a very important issue and I welcome the opportunity to discuss it with you, even thought your answer might have been more effective without the comment about "moralistic ranting".
The link you gave me,
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309076013/html/3.html#pagetop.
was valuable and it is honest of you to so clearly present the basis of your understanding. I assume
that you refer to the whole report and not just the single table 2-2. I read the report, it offers much valuable data and opinion, some that I agree with and some not. The issues that I have another opinion on are mostly related to European data that differs and some of the conclusions. I recommend anyone to read the report, it is good, it even recognizes the fuel economy success of diesel cars in Europe.
If you read my letter, I did not really intend to take up your favorite issue of vehicle weight, but rather to deal with a car type that has some specific and dangerous properties. I will therefore try to keep to this in my answer, even if it is tempting to challenge your whole argument of weight which can be done based on the report that you refer to. I have to touch on the weight issue anyway and maybe we can expand that discussion at a later stage.
In the report it is clearly stated that the largest change of fatalities relating to weight does not come from the absolute weight but from a change in the mix of the different weights in the fleet. This means in absurdum that if the fleet consists of only two types, one half of very light and the other half of very heavy vehicles, the risk and fatalities reach a maximum. If the fleet consist of vehicles of equal weight the risk would be minimum, if they have a maximized safety design. If we had an equal weight vehicle fleet, the absolute weight might or might not be an issue for safety concerns. The point is that a change in the relations between heavy and light vehicles will effect the number of fatalities.
The report covers vehicles between 1 and 3 years of age. The 1993 numbers point to an effect of a switch over to lighter vehicles due to the CAFÉ standard and had a rising effect on fatalities. The report however recommends incentives/penalties that would encourage measure to make vehicles over 4,000 lb lighter and states that this could give safety gains. Your opinion on the weight issue is therefore worth further scrutiny. In the last few years we have a very large change in the mix, with the marketing, tax incentive and popularity of SUVs and therefore a substantial risk of a rise in fatalities. It is maybe necessary to mention that statistically the fatalities/million cars would go up for fatalities in normal cars in this case and go down in heavier cars. The data in the report to support this is not conclusive enough, even if there is good reason to suspect it. The biggest rise in SUV sales is in the period after 1999, where data are not available.
My letter and opinion about SUVs only touches the weight issue as a possible secondary parameter. I am talking about a car type that has a high gravity point and a design that makes it dangerous on the roads. The SUV is designed for off road environments and the on road considerations are therefore not optimized for safety.
You are claiming that the roll over effects are included in table 2-2 and I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you did not look at table 2-3, which explicitly deals with the total numbers from roll over. I recommend that you go back and look at it. It shows that between 1993 and 1999 the normal cars had a decrease of 5% in fatalities caused by roll over and an increase of 40% in the category that SUV belong to. This despite the fact that the most successful yearly sales of SUVs are in the years after 1999.
The table 2-3 is also very interesting on the weight issue, with the 19% decrease in fatalities in collisions car to car and 20% increase in collisions car to light truck (SUV group). It is also a remarkable 60% increase in fatalities from truck to truck collisions, which seems to mirror the changes in fleet composition and the additions of SUVs. These numbers are a very strong support for my opinion and make it even more difficult to understand where your opinion on the weight issue comes from. In light of this, I suggest that you might have a reason to reevaluate and adjust your opinion and message.
I am sorry, but I do not see anything in the material that you pointed me to, that would cause me to change my opinion in my original letter. The report and the data, even if it is only goes to 1999, support my original opinion.
Hakan Falk
January 10, 2003, Open letter to Sam Kazman regarding promotion of SUVs.
Sam Kazman's January 10, 2003, response to the open letter.
January 12, 2003, Letter to Sam Kazman.
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