Accident analysis of sports utility vehicles: human factors from statistical analysis and case studies

Recently, with leisure time increasing in Japan, Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) have become very popular. Therefore, accidents involving SUVs are also increasing. We analyze SUV accidents using statistics and the case study method accessing a national accident database and in-depth accident investigative data. SUV accidents may be characterized by accident type, driver age, purpose of travel, injured occupant age, collision type, etc. Among the case studies, one accident involving pedestrians, one rear-end collision, and one rollover are analyzed. Accident factors, especially human factors, are discussed. (C) 2000 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.