Airbags - NHTSA Counts of Fatalities & Injuries

Reports, announcements, statistics from NHTSA, NTSB, FHWA, IIHS, and others related to Highway Safety
MSI
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Airbags - NHTSA Counts of Fatalities & Injuries

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Jan 2009 NHTSA Special Investigations Report: Counts of Frontal Air Bag Related Fatalities and Seriously Injured Persons
The following is from the report from NHTSA: The methods for estimating the number of “Registered Air Bag Equipped Vehicles,” and the “Fatalities Per Million Vehicle Years” have been modified to more accurately reflect the air bag exposure rates for drivers and passengers. The new figures have been modified to consider the attrition rates1 of vehicles on the road by model year, and the amount of time each vehicle was on the road during its first year. The current year’s estimate for the modified “Registered Air Bag Equipped Vehicles” is the same as the previous year’s “Registered Air Bag Equipped Vehicles.” These numbers will be updated when R.L. Polk current year vehicle registration data become available the following year.
The quantity “Fatalities Per Million Vehicle Years” for a specific vehicle model year was previously calculated by dividing the count of occupants fatally injured by a deploying air bag for a given vehicle model year, by the product of the number of new vehicles registered that are air bag equipped for the given year and the number of years the vehicles of that year have been on the road. In the past when calculating the number of years vehicles of a given model year have been on the road, with the exception of the current MY, each vehicle was counted as being on the road for a full year. A new method of estimating the time each vehicle was on the road during its first year has been developed in which an even distribution of vehicle registrations is assumed throughout the year. Analysis of this distribution shows that a more accurate estimate of the time each vehicle was on the road in its first production year is one half of a year. The quantity “Fatalities Per Million Vehicle Years” for a normalized 12-month period was previously calculated by dividing the count of occupants fatally injured by a deploying air bag for each 12-month production period by the total number of registered vehicles with air bags during that same interval. Each 12-month production period was aligned with the vehicle production year, September 1 through August 31. A change similar to the one made for the vehicle model year exposure estimate was made for the quantity “Fatalities Per Million Vehicle Years” for a normalized 12-month period. The new method divides the count of occupants fatally injured by a deploying air bag for each 12-month period by the sum of the total number of registered vehicles with air bags of the previous model years3 and one half the registered vehicles of the vehicle model year that corresponds to the production period of the crash. Please see the Full Report
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