Investigating crashworthiness capability of Iranian major car brands in rollover crashes

Road crashes are one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide, especially in developing countries such as Iran; where the number of deaths in road crashes is around 16500 per year. Single vehicle and especially rollover crashes are one of the most important types of crashes. Despite the fact that rollover crashes constitute a small proportion of crashes, but they are the reason of a great proportion of crash deaths and thus, it is necessary to investigate them carefully. This study aims at indexing crashworthiness capability of 20 most frequently used car brands in Iran. In this regard, the data of 42,118 rollover crashes of urban and rural roads of Iran which occurred during 2009 through 2012 was used. A Binomial Logistic Regression Model was applied in order to define crashworthiness index based on the driver’s injury severity level. Although the results revealed that Proton (Malaysia) and Hyundai/Light truck (South Korea) have the best performances in rollover crashes, no special trend was found regarding to crashworthiness capability of foreign and Iranian brands.

Keywords:

Rollover crashes , crashworthiness capability , binomial logistic regression model , car brand , Iranian brands