Four-wheel drive vehicle crash involvement patterns

In order to examine current 4WD crash and injury patterns and trends in as much detail as possible, data for the years 1999 to 2003 from five Australasian jurisdictions were analysed, consisting of data from Australian states Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, and from New Zealand. A relatively small proportion of the crashed vehicles (5%) were 4WDs. This analysis, which compared the performance of 4WDs with that of cars, showed that a driver is about 3.4 times as likely to die when involved in a rollover as a car driver; in contrast, a 4WD driver is about a fifth as likely to die when involved in a head-on crash as a car driver. Crash patterns by type of 4WD were also evaluated. Larger 4WDs were shown by previous MUARC research to be relatively aggressive vehicles, which were more likely to kill or injure car drivers when in a head-on collision. All three types of 4WDs considered (compact, medium and large) were shown to be more likely to roll over and to provide relatively poor protection to their occupants (more particularly, to their driver) in rollover crashes. However, there were a number of mitigating criteria in favour of 4WDs as a passenger vehicle, Firstly, despite the increasing size of the 4WD fleet, there did not appear to be a concomitant growing threat to car drivers. The reasons for this may be related to changes in the way that 4WDs are being used, and possibly to the growing number of smaller 4WDs in the fleet, gradually replacing the more aggressive large 4WDs.