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Modern SUV with a large front-end (Photo by Tanner Boriack on Unsplash)SUVs more dangerous to cyclists than other cars, study suggests
A recent study from the US has found that SUVs are causing more cyclist injuries, with crashes with SUVs resulting in 55 per cent more trauma and 63 per cent more head injuries than crashes with cars, owing to taller front-end designs.
Research from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent and non-profit American organisation has revealed that SUVs pose a far greater danger to cyclists on road than other cars, and their front ends are largely to blame.
The study looked at not only the rate and severity of injuries to cyclists caused by cars and SUVs, but also the way that the damage was inflicted upon the victims.
Samuel Monfort and Becky Mueller, IIHS statisticians and lead authors of the study, looked at 71 bicycle crashes in Michigan, compiled by the International Center for Automotive Medicine’s Pedestrian Consortium. All involved cyclists over the age of 15, and a single car or SUV. And according to his analysis, there was a clear and obvious pattern with the crashes.
The tall front end of SUVs can strike bicyclists higher on their bodies above the centre of gravity. This results in cyclists getting knocked down, where they can be run over, rather than being thrown onto the hood of the vehicle, he said.
> SUVs 'eight times more dangerous' to kids walking or cycling than smaller cars are
For the study, Monfort used the Abbreviated Injury Scale — which assesses injuries by body region — and the Injury Severity Score, which combines injuries from different regions into an overall assessment.
It revealed that ground-impact injuries were twice as common on SUV crashes. Further, trauma to the body was 55 per cent higher for SUVs than for cars, as well as scores for head injuries inflicted by SUVs were 63 per cent higher.
Some 10 per cent of the SUV incidents examined also resulted in the bicyclist being run over, while none of the car crashes had a similar effect. Even if cyclists weren't run over by SUVs, the rate of ground-contact injuries following impacts with SUVs were more than twice as common compared with cars.
The data also suggested that SUVs tend to cause the most injuries with their wheels or undercarriage, after knocking cyclists to the ground. In the eight accidents with information about what part of the vehicle actually hurt the cyclist, the wheels or undercarriage of SUVs were responsible for 82 per cent of head injuries.
🆕 | Higher point of impact makes SUV crashes more dangerous for cyclists
Read more: https://t.co/BsvR2oaXdN pic.twitter.com/QDwIIOcaVJ
— IIHS (@IIHS_autosafety) April 13, 2023
According to a US Government agency, fatal bicycle accidents have increased by 33 per cent since 2010. In 2021, 966 cyclists were reported killed in crashes. This is up from 621 bicyclist fatalities in 2010, IIHS said.
> Tyre Extinguishers target SUVs on home turf of the ‘Chelsea Tractor’
Last year, we reported that another US study showed that SUVs are eight times more dangerous to kids walking or cycling than smaller cars are. It also found that although SUVs are involved in much fewer crashes than standard cars, they are twice as fatal.
Previous research from IIHS has also shown that SUVs are markedly fatal to pedestrians as well, with fatal collisions holding a probability of 30 per cent, as opposed to 23 per cent for cars, when travelling at speeds of 20-39mph. However, at speeds greater than 40mph, all three crashes with SUVs killed the pedestrian, compared with 7 out of 13 crashes involving cars.
The IIHS argued that the growing popularity of SUVS is to blame for the rising number of injuries and fatalities, and said that there needs to be additional research into more protective front ends.
“We found that SUVs injured bicyclists they struck more severely than cars did, even after controlling for pre-impact speed, time of day, location of the crash, and bicyclist age and sex,” the report concludes. “The pattern of results suggests that the size and shape of SUV front ends are responsible for the differences in bicyclist injury outcomes, which is consistent with our past findings on pedestrian crash outcomes.”
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after completing his masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Cymru, and also likes to write about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
Latest Comments
- David9694 1 hour 12 min ago
Theres not one scrap of self-help among drivers is there, it's always someone else's issue.
- Simon E 2 hours 56 sec ago
Oh dear. A single bike in a single size in one shop is not indicative of the entire UK market for bicycles. And the slump isn't just bikes, it's...
- hawkinspeter 4 hours 53 min ago
Ridiculed or is it just jealousy?
- Rendel Harris 5 hours 19 min ago
Thank goodness for that. I don't suppose anyone would want you to. You certainly behave like one though.
- Eton Rifle 5 hours 26 min ago
You do see some utterly ridiculous examples of car use....
- Eton Rifle 5 hours 49 min ago
Exactly. Every road death is a tragedy but this is at the "twat deserved it" end of the spectrum, looking at the state of that car.
- Rendel Harris 5 hours 56 min ago
I'm not the editor of this article, nor indeed of anything on this website. One would have thought that didn't require explaining.
- Eton Rifle 5 hours 57 min ago
I think the answer is in your question. I genuinely didn't know he was married to her. It does kinda explain it. Disappointing, nevertheless.
- Daclu Trelub 10 hours 42 min ago
In a perfect world, we'd have a measure of how easily distracted someone is, as part of their driving test....
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56 comments
All these articles about keeping cyclists safe by using hi-viz, helmets, segregated cycle lanes are by and large missing the point. Cyclists are vulnerable and drivers are invulnerable: there is no balance of risk, so we need to change it so that drivers have an equal chance of being killed if they drive into a cyclist. Therefore, all cyclists should be legally allowed to carry a firearm: nothing excessive, not automatic weapons, just something like a decent size revolver or pistol.
Every time a driver cuts you up, you take a shot at them: ten points for a direct hit on them, eight points for a tyre, five for a rear light, and three for the bodywork. And if anyone asks, it was their fault for not wearing hi-viz or a helmet. Might require a training course as shooting from a bike could be tricky.
Hierarchy of road users, don't you know. The new HC isn't working, and the comprehensive review of road laws seems to be stuck in traffic somewhere, so time we took the law into our own hands: literally.
Time for this one again then? Or its judicial fall-out?
Of course the difference is that drivers didn't mean to kill. Or at least it's very hard to convince a jury the opposite, unless there's a personal connection or it's clearly "criminal enterprise" or "terrorism".
We know wrong 'uns when we see 'em.
But maybe you're one of the few who might feel uneasy - isn't it a personal choice someone made to drive? (Maybe something like Ashley Neal's "the driver innocently killed..." gives you pause). Perhaps you're pondering what if any responsibilities might go hand-in-hand with "rights"? But then there is the normalisation of driving. We can excuse people not treating the repetitive and mundane with great care. ("A thousand trips, and no incident...") And then there's the requirement to drive. The latter is a pressure commonly understood to be somewhere on the continuum from aspiration to social obligation. Or even the urgency of dealing with bleeding / starving to death when it has come to be that the nearest hospital / takeway is a good ten miles distant.
Anyway, on the advert - what I want to know is - if you see no tramp, does that make you the tramp?
The Ingram-10 is designed for close quarters battle so able to discharge it full magazine on automatic within a couple of seconds. The high rate of fire overcomes the normal effect of recoil on a hand held weapon..
Taking a responsible approach to transport of dangerous goods my bike should be labelled for explosive materials. Methane emissions are unpredictable but a public danger none the less. All road users beware!
If I were standing for election I wouldn't go around suggesting that people deserve to be shot for minor traffic infractions.
You've put enough information on here about where you live, which party you are standing for, etc to be easily traceable.
It would be a shame for a local cycling revolution to be curtailed before it even began.
I'll just pick up on something here: risking cyclists lives with poor driving is not a minor traffic infraction - isn't that the fundamental problem that many drivers don't accept the risks they take on a daily basis with other people's health and wellbeing?
(Not disagreeing with you choosing to pull eBurt on a post that you see as inappropriate even if in jest).
Just for the record I don't see eburt's post as tremendously inappropriate, but with local elections upcoming and with the displayed views of some on here (Martin, Nigel, etc) I just think it would be a shame for someone with whom I mostly agree (albeit with the exception of one subject that I will not bring up right now) to be hamstrung by some cretin with an axe to grind.
And yes, I certainly do think that inadvertently cutting up another road user (regardless of their vehicle or lack thereof) is a minor traffic infraction. Doing it purposefully, or actually causing a collision is another matter.
What sport?
What utility?
Looks like an entitled consumption of public space and unsustainable resources to me.
Are the users of these vehicles really unable to fit into the space designed for normal human beings?
Motor vehicle manufacturers must be held to account for unsustainable products like tobacco companies. Including labels to show the road danger (top speed X weight) kinetic energy since emissions haven't had any effect (vehicle excise duty).
As SUVs are obviously Gods gift to humanity, the only way out is making helmets compulsory...
Oh, no hi Viz then ?
Damn, beat me to it.
And helmets are guaranteed proof against HGVs: sorry SUVs.
Let's not forget the effect of SUV drivers...
What came first, the wankpanzer or the wankdriver? I'm inclined to think the latter, but the advent of the wankpanzer has certainly given them a far bigger canvas on which to express themselves.
Our only defence is anti-wank panzer bazookas.
Where do they fit in the hierarchy of road users?
Following #wankpanzers on twitter is a constant revelation.
https://twitter.com/Wankpanzer/status/1646936634611335168
"Every so often I question if I should be driving a #wankpanzer, so I ask someone to show me a sign"
So I was in America recently and an American pointed to a SUV identical to her own, except slightly smaller and lower to the ground, and said she used to have that but "had to trade it for something less wimpy."
I also looked at the US sites for various car manufacturers and found that anything remotely compact was missing, no Ford Focus and definitely no Fiesta or Ka
Utterly beneath notice.
When I was there 12 years ago, the smallest car I could hire was 2.4l.
she should see the size of the pick-up trucks we have here in the UK:
https://goo.gl/maps/ogALkieeAzMddV2b8
Beyond June this year you won't be able to get a Fiesta in Europe either. According to the BBC, Ford are deleting them from their range, in order to focus (no pun intended!) on developing EVs.
Here in sunny Oz the 3-tonne truck has taken over from the home-grown "Falcodore" V8s, so amazingly the V8 has been replaced by something even more ludicrous and dangerous to everyone else. Same reason as in the UK; crazy tax laws!
tis true, Ford are focussing on only making EVs in the future, and the Fiesta is too small a car frame to convert, with the added weight of the batteries and concerns on range being a factor.
plus they dont sell many of them anymore apparently.
Just like rim brake to disk brake wheels, only a full redesign is credible. Fiesta was designed for the legacy ICE and drive train. A real EV must be designed for electric drive close by or within the wheels and a floor plan for the battery. Anything else is just inefficient.
Long-running mystery of bear toilet habits solved.
But what about the Pope?
Apparently as it turns out, he's not a Protestant.
Tonight we ask, the Devil: is he all bad?
https://youtu.be/EWa3LyvFOdc
Still kissing airports.
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