Defensive purchasing, the safety (dis)advantage of light trucks, and motor-vehicle policy effectiveness

We model motor-vehicle choice when a consumer's utility from a particular vehicle depends in part on that vehicle's expected safety, and thus on the vehicle choices made by other consumers with which (s)he may collide. Calibration of model parameters suggests that light trucks do impose an externality on cars and that increasing the proportion of light trucks in the fleet harms truck and car owners alike. The marginal private cost of accidents from light truck ownership relative to cars is of ambiguous sign and may even represent a large safety disadvantage. Analyses that omit expected vehicle safety will overestimate the impacts of policies such as gasoline taxes or changes to fuel economy standards on the fleet, and underestimate the impacts of vehicle crash-compatibility design changes.

[1]  Ted Gayer,et al.  The Fatality Risks of Sport-Utility Vehicles, Vans, and Pickups Relative to Cars , 2001 .

[2]  P. Portney,et al.  Policy Watch: The Economics of Fuel Economy Standards , 2003 .

[3]  Alf Erling Risa.  Adverse Incentives from Improved Technology: Traffic Safety Regulation in Norway , 1994 .

[4]  M. White,et al.  The “Arms Race” on American Roads: The Effect of Sport Utility Vehicles and Pickup Trucks on Traffic Safety* , 2004, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[5]  T. Keeler.  Highway Safety, Economic Behavior, and Driving Environment , 1991 .

[6]  Ps Hu.  SUMMARY OF TRAVEL TRENDS: 2001 NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD TRAVEL SURVEY , 2004 .

[7]  D. Commerce.  Statistical abstract of the United States , 1978 .

[8]  Mark D. Levine,et al.  A Road Map for U.S. Carbon Reductions , 1998, Science.

[9]  James K Hammitt,et al.  Safety Impacts of SUVs, Vans, and Pickup Trucks in Two‐Vehicle Crashes , 2003, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[10]  D. Greene.  CAFE OR PRICE?: An Analysis of the Effects of Federal Fuel Economy Regulations and Gasoline Price on New Car MPG, 1978-89 , 1990, Controlling Automobile Air Pollution.

[11]  J. Graham,et al.  The Effect of Fuel Economy Standards on Automobile Safety , 1989, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[12]  Robert Bamberger.  AUTOMOBILE AND LIGHT TRUCK FUEL ECONOMY: THE CAFE STANDARDS. UPDATED DECEMBER 2, 2002 , 2002 .

[13]  Paul E. Godek,et al.  The Regulation of Fuel Economy and the Demand for “Light Trucks”1 , 1997, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[14]  Leonard Evans,et al.  The Influence of Forward Vision and Target Size on Apparent Inter-Vehicular Spacing , 1976 .

[15]  S. Peltzman.  The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation , 1975, Journal of Political Economy.

[16]  L. Einav,et al.  The Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws on Driving Behavior and Traffic Fatalities , 2003 .

[17]  Richard Tay.  Marginal effects of changing the vehicle mix on fatal crashes , 2003 .

[18]  David J. Ball,et al.  The Value of Road Safety: UK Research on the Valuation of Preventing Non-Fatal Injuries , 1994 .

[19]  Scott E. Atkinson,et al.  THE VALUATION OF RISKS TO LIFE : EVIDENCE FROM THE MARKET FOR AUTOMOBILES , 1990 .

[20]  W K Viscusi,et al.  Rates of Time Preference and Consumer Valuations of Automobile Safety and Fuel Efficiency , 1995, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[21]  Greg M. Allenby,et al.  Modeling Interdependent Consumer Preferences , 2003 .

[22]  Joseph E. Aldy,et al.  The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World , 2003 .

[23]  George E. Hoffer,et al.  Testing for Offsetting Behavior and Adverse Recruitment Among Drivers of Airbag-Equipped Vehicles , 2003 .

[24]  Christopher Garbacz,et al.  More evidence on the effectiveness of seat belt laws , 1992 .

[25]  Robert W. Crandall,et al.  Regulating the Automobile , 1986 .

[26]  John M. Yun.  OFFSETTING BEHAVIOR EFFECTS OF THE CORPORATE AVERAGE FUEL ECONOMY STANDARDS , 2002 .

[27]  Mark Thayer,et al.  Impact of Seat Belt Use on Driving Behavior , 1992 .

[28]  Richard Tay.  The prisoner's dilemma and vehicle safety: Some policy implications , 2002 .

[29]  Winston Harrington,et al.  Should Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards Be Tightened , 2004 .

[30]  Peter C. Fishburn,et al.  Utility Functions for Wealth , 2000 .

[31]  Andrew N. Kleit,et al.  The effect of annual changes in automobile fuel economy standards , 1990 .

[32]  Steven D. Levitt,et al.  Sample Selection in the Estimation of Air Bag and Seat Belt Effectiveness , 1999, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[33]  Peter D. Loeb,et al.  THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SEAT-BELT LEGISLATION IN REDUCING INJURY RATES IN TEXAS , 1995 .

[34]  P. S. Hu,et al.  Summary of Travel Trends , 2004 .

[35]  K. Small,et al.  Does Britain or the United States Have the Right Gasoline Tax , 2005 .

[36]  Roger H. von Haefen,et al.  Distributional and Efficiency Impacts of Gasoline Taxes: An Econometrically Based Multi-market Study , 2005 .

[37]  Steven G. Thorpe,et al.  Fuel Economy Standards, New Vehicle Sales, and Average Fuel Efficiency , 1997 .

[38]  Ian W. H. Parry,et al.  Comparing Alternative Policies to Reduce Traffic Accidents , 2004 .

[39]  P. Goldberg,et al.  The Effects of the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Standards , 1996 .