The association between passenger vehicle size and pedestrian fatality in Australia

Abstract

Pedestrian death rate in Australia has increased over multiple consecutive years, following decades of relatively consistent decline, while car-occupant safety has relatively improved. In the United States, this type of divergence has increasingly been linked to the growth of larger passenger vehicles (e.g., SUVs and pick-ups). However, whether this mechanism generalises to other vehicle markets, specifically those with different pedestrian safety histories such as Australia, remains uncertain. Without clear localised evidence, the issue is unlikely to be recognised as a serious safety problem in non-U.S. markets. To assess whether this mechanism operates in Australia, we linked 10,376 pedes..