Prius fatal accident rate
 

All of the details are here:

Prius Fatalities 2001-2007

If a Prius and another car are engaged in a two-car accident, the Prius gets 50% of the credit. So initially, I just calculated the ratio of all Prius and non-Prius vehicles in accidents to prorate the deaths. This gave a prorated, 74 deaths due to the existence of the Prius in the accident. But then I noticed some accidents were just single car, Prius accidents.

I went back and recalculated the deaths per accident prorated by the Prius percentage. Much to my surprise, it came even lower, 0.55 Prius fatalities per 100 million miles.

The web page lists all Prius involved, fatal accidents from 2001-2007. It also shows how I calculated the number of Prius on the road from the annual Prius sales minus a worst case, 3% loss per year, and accounting for only half of the miles for a car sold in the first year of service. Thus our Prius skeptics have a problem, the facts and data are unkind to them.

Bob Wilson

Prius fatalities per 100 million miles is less than half of the national average!

That's good news. That should be in the title or tags somehow. Google likes Ecomodder. Would help spread the news

Nice work, Bob.

I popped over to your page on the subject. Excellent analysis. The kind of sloppy work done by "Quality Planning" and their ilk is just all too common. "Journalists" rarely have the sense to check these kinds of "studies" out or have them checked out by an expert before sending them out into the TVs of the vast unquestioning herds. By the time the errors are found it's too late.

There's a new "study" out by Tim Hortons claiming that drive throughs are less polluting than park and serve restaurants. Another sloppy bit of work that is very misleading. Have you seen it?

Thread here: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...alk-11400.html

Thanks! I took a quick read and have a suggestion for an NHW11 experiment you might want to replicate while the engine is still warming up:

• stop in "D" - monitor 30 seconds of idle fuel burn
• stop in "N" - monitor 30 second of idle fuel burn
• stop, turn off engine, restart 30 seconds - monitor fuel burn

Before I started cutting through my neighborhood to let the ICE warm up to 70 C, I had a shorter distance, less than 0.5 km, to a traffic light. That was where I learned sitting in "N" while waiting for a light change minimized fuel burn. I tried stopping the engine and waiting but the 'manual' engine startup was pretty wasteful of gas. If the car is in hybrid mode (Stage-4,) the engine start is 'free' but manually startup seems to invoke different control laws and burns more fuel than I think it should.

As for ordinary gas cars, all bets are off. We only have one on our driveway and ... I need to make sure it still runs one of these days.

Bob Wilson

This is certainly good news for Toyota Prius fans!

Can you believe that there are already this many Toyota Prius cars on the road now?

Someone needs to publish documentation on Prius oil life/brake pad wear. The engines have to be making a difference in these areas as well.

Good news, but I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that some people wouldn't be caught dead in a Prius.:D

Nah, that's the SmartCar.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PxZyE6Jgab...r-accident.jpg

dude, you know that isn't a smart, don't you?

I'm sorry.. the next time someone posts this picture, or one of a similar nature, I'm requesting a ban.

Seriously. SMARTS HAVE 3 LUGNUTS.

EDIT: I'm not sorry, actually. I don't care what anyone else thinks, these "news bits" are ridiculous, at best. They serve to perpetuate a rumor started by people who drive SUV's and insist that the laws of physics somehow stand in their favor during an accident, without ever looking at the big picture of how an SUV reacts in different situations compared to smaller cars, which, in many cases, are safer.

This is the actual car: VW Crossfox (sold in Brazil)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3196/...b764a6d962.jpg

Below the link to more pics of the accident photo above: WARNING - PHOTOS ARE NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

Volkswagen CrossFox VS Truck | The Cars FAIL Blog

It was a joke meant to be funny.

One of the biggest problems with forums is moderators who feel they must state that they can ban users.

I am too old (on the net since 1989) to read another techno junkie state they can ban members. :mad:

Honestly, grow up and state something different next time. :thumbup:

===============

In respect to the car, I think the thread got hijacked with the Prius wreck comment. I got lost in the moment and forgot that I made a constructive comment.:thumbup:

As stated in PM - I'm not a mod. I can't ban you. I wouldn't have, anyway, even if I had the ability, but those pictures really do elicit a bad response from me.

If you'd made it more clear that you were posting in jocularity, that would have been awesome.

No offense meant to you, sir. It was a general comment about the pictures and the rumors they perpetuate.

How about I even the score a bit:

Over 10,000 people die every year in the US in SUV rollovers.

This blows out of the water the idea that they are safer than small cars

SUV Rollover Crash Facts
Crashes in which a vehicle rolled over accounted for more than half of all single-vehicle crash deaths. (NHTSA)

Vehicle rollover crashes are especially serious because they so often result in head injuries. Head trauma is the most frequent type of fatal and nonfatal injury in rollovers. (NHTSA)

The rate of serious injury in passenger vehicle rollover crashes is 36 percent higher than in crashes where there is no rollover. (NHTSA)

More than 90 percent of passenger vehicle rollover crashes are single-vehicle crashes, and 8,345 of the 10,142 occupant deaths occurred in single-vehicle rollover crashes. (NHTSA)

Now, if those numbers included the vehicles weight.

Indeed, weight is a major factor.

Vehicles with more mass will maintain more energy in the event of an accident because of the law of inertia. This means passengers in heavier vehicles won't be thrown around quite as much as passengers in lighter, smaller cars, depending on the type of collision.

While it is true that trucks and SUVs can and do roll over from a high center of gravity, it does not mean larger, heavier vehicles can't be safer in certain situations. For example, take the SUV out of the equation and have a Lincoln Town Car collide with a Honda Civic, then see who goes spinning. The laws of physics are not "rumors."

Beyond physics, there is also the driver's skill that needs to be considered. Inexperienced drivers will swerve harder than needed, which may cause the vehicle to roll.

I personally think the Prius fatal accident rate has more to do with the typical Prius driver than the vehicle itself. I would argue that there is an disproportionally large percentage of Prius drivers whose driving style is inherently safer when compared to other midsize cars drivers.

I think there's a lot of factors going into the Prius (and other compact cars) safety record. As orange4boy said, 10,000 people die each year in SUV rollovers. What percent of the vehicle fleet is SUV's versus compact cars? I'd like to know percent of deaths in SUVs versus that of compact cars (like for every 1000 SUVs the death rate is .05 or something, then the same measure for compacts) that would give an apples to apples comparison.

The argument of whether a small car is as safe as a truck/SUV keeps coming up. Why? A quick look at the physics seems conclusive. The human body suffers damage as a result of the -impulse- sustained in a collision. The change in momentum (mass times velocity) over a short time span exerts tremendous forces on human tissue, ie neck, brain, chest, organs). The less change in velocity you have during an accident the better your survival rate is (thus why people walk away from a 10mph parking lot bump). Extending the same change in velocity over a slightly longer time span also results in large reductions in the forces applied to your body. In a head-on collision of two vehicles traveling at the same speed:

For an elastic collision (kinetic energy conserved, like billiard balls, its not but assume)
The heavier vehicle -always- maintains more of its initial velocity (and thus, less impulse on the occupants)

For an inelastic collision (kinetic energy not conserved, but momentum is, more like a car accident)
The heavier vehicle -still- maintains more of its initial velocity (and thus, less impulse still) than the smaller car.

Go ahead, check it out, Georgia State University says so:
Standard Collision Examples

Put in your own values for masses, and velocities... you always want to be riding in the vehicle that sustains a smaller impulse. And this does not take into account the smaller crush zone available on the small car, which compounds the impulse problem. Nor does it account for the point of impact problem. (If my Silverado T-boned a Prius the truck bumper is about level with the door handle, mostly passing over the Prius' relatively rigid door rail and floorboards).

I think that you could say that it's the fault of the Prius driver, as opposed to the vehicle, but that's adding a new variable to an already sullied equation.

If you sit and think about it, it's true. You put one of us (attentive, responsible, etc) behind the wheel of an SUV, and the chances of a rollover crash go down ALOT. Versus the "average" driver, who has a higher death percentage from rollover crashes.

At the same rate, throw a jerkoff driver in the safest car there is, and he'll find a way to wreck it and kill himself. And frankly, if he can do that, I'm not so sure we (as a species) are not better off because of it.

Unless they take one of us safer drivers with them.

I agree with most of the above. It's been a good balanced discussion. I realize that a raw number does not have much weight in a statistical analysis and that vehicle safety has just as much to do with the nut behind the wheel as FE.

As for vehicle safety, the variables are enormous, A small, light car is more maneuverable and resistant to rollover, a heavy car has more inertia and possibly more sheet metal to act as a shock absorber but possibly won't be able to avoid an accident as easily. SUV's have better forward visibility but relatively poor avoidance ability and if they roll the possibility of injury or death skyrockets.

Like so many discussions of "this is better than that" It all comes down to "it depends"

Blanket statements need not apply.

I fully expected that, from someone. It really is a matter staged more for discussion than anything, but without hardcore study, I don't think we can really reach any kind of positive/negative about the situation. In fact, even with the most hardcore studies, I don't think it could be that black and white. I think that the answers for safety lie more in the gray area on a case-by-case basis.

I just find the safety discussions tiresome. The biggest risk you take is being in or around cars, after that it is pretty much diminishing returns.

But I will say that nobody ever accidently killed someone else while riding a bicycle or walking that I know of. It probably happened, once, but one would have to be delusional to think bigger vehicles are "safer" in any but the most selfish respects, and it isn't much improvement in that respect if even.

If it is true that bigger causes more damage and is more likely to hit something because of size and reduced handling (basic physics right?) then at some point all that extra damage and casualties has to be considered premeditated, no?

I doubt any U.S. politicians are going to run on that platform any time soon though :)

The words "Conspiracy to commit" just ran across my brain... LOL.

lol, I would make exception for real people movers and utility vehicles, better one truck full of stuff than 80 metros.

But seriously, can you imagine being in this all-too-common nightmare scenario? You buy a big a$$ vehicle, then back over your kid? My dad-in-law saw it happen once and the guy driving was completely useless, complete panic, couldn't even figure out 911 or talk calmly to the kid or nothin. Glad dad-in-law was there to be useful.

I've seen that scenario a few times, but never with dire results. Usually it's a young person old enough to move/yell and the driver is at least somewhat attentive and yells.

Hell, my Father's backed into me a few times, but that's a little different. That was either in jest, or an unexpected turn of events and bad timing. We do things with vehicles that most people don't dream about, though.