Heavier, pricier vehicles are safer, research finds - Phys.Org
"The most important point of our study is that vehicle weight and price have a positive relationship with vehicle safety," said Dietrich Jehle, MD, professor of emergency medicine in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who... Jehle, who also is an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Erie County Medical Center, has long studied the variables that contribute to injuries sustained in car accidents. "Neither media advertising nor the five-star safety ratings accurately reflect the level of danger or lack of danger in vehicles. The five-star crash ratings reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are based on results from crash tests that may be technically accurate but may not completely reflect what happens in real-world crashes with multiple cars,... "When smaller cars hit a larger, moving vehicle, that change in velocity can force the smaller car to go into reverse, resulting in far more serious injuries to driver and passenger. Instead, Jehle and his colleagues studied personal injury claims data as an indicator of vehicle safety in the 17 states that have no-fault insurance. The study looked at the frequency of personal injury claims for specific vehicles, which, Jehle said, correlates very closely with the dollar amount of personal injury claims. Source: phys.org
