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Is road safety being driven in the wrong direction?
OFFROADERs UNSAFE?
Following a publication in a main swiss newspaper about safety of offroaders (big SUV’s) a FEVR board member reacted with a response letter to be published
Here is the English translation:
MISLEADING is the title of an article published in the major Swiss
news magazine NZZ from 18th May 2014, claiming a doubtable enhanced
transport safety of off-road Vehicles like SUVs, as it turns out only by
reading the article itself. In deed, that car occupants of these cars
perform better in collisions than those of other cars is not surprising, since
these bought their safety at the expense of the others. However, the bad
image of the SUVs is not due to the fact, that opponents in smaller cars get
the short end of the stick (why not?), but because pedestrians and
cyclists lose. There is no word about these unprotected road users in the
article. Most readers will keep the fat printed title and the article’s
lead in mind. But let us not be fooled:
The on road omnipresent potency prostheses can easily ruin our own lives,
since they clearly ought to be powerful. And nobody drives faultlessly, not
even in an off-road vehicle.Rolf Strassfeld
FEVR board member
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Indeed: following a crash of a big SUV with a smaller, lighter car, the passenger of this last one have a risk 6 times higher to get severly injured. And concerning vulnerable road users being hit by a SUV, the risk of severe injuries is much higher compared to a “vru friendly car”, even at slower speeds ( J. Mersch FEVR president)
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Is road safety being driven in the wrong direction?
a study done by Professor Ian Roberts about the approach to road safety education:
are educational interventions effective? or could health and environmental benefits such as reducing car use be more beneficial.
more: Is road safety being driven in the wrong direction (pdf)
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