Light truck safety: an unfolding story

This paper reviews a decade's research into the crash safety of light trucks, which include pickups, light vans, and utility vehicles. The three light-truck types are consistently found to have higher rollover rates than cars have in single-vehicle accidents. Rollover crashes, in turn, generally exhibited higher injury rates than other crashes. Nevertheless, injury rates of light trucks and cars differed little in single-vehicle crashes. In two-vehicle crashes, light truck occupants were found better protected than car occupants. Light trucks evidenced aggressiveness in damaging other vehicles and injuring their occupants. (Author/TRRL)