UMTRI Project

Potential Effects of Low-Mass Vehicles with Ideal Crash Avoidance

Sponsor: GM
Investigators: Kathleen DeSantis Klinich, Carol Flannagan
02/01/2011 - 08/31/2011

Methods were developed to explore the effect on injuries and crash distribution if vehicles were replaced with low-mass vehicles (LMVs) that had ideal crash avoidance technology. This means that these vehicles could never cause a crash, but could be the struck vehicle in certain types of crashes. Analysis was performed using US crash data, and the results helped to identify priorities for passive safety countermeasures based on the resulting distributions of crashes and injuries.