A preliminary analysis of the risks and benefits of selected vehicle safety interventions for accidents involving light commercial vehicles (LCVs) or minibuses

The use of light commercial vehicles (goods vehicles not exceeding 3.5 tonnes, LCVs) is growing much faster than for other vehicle types and in 2008 there were in excess of three million such vehicles registered in GB (9.7% of all vehicle stock) travelling 68 billion km per year (13.4% of all traffic).

The construction of such vehicles in terms of safety is much less regulated than for other vehicle types (Knight et al., 2009). As such, there have been a number of proposals to include LCVs within the scope of passenger car crash test requirements, either through regulatory and/or consumer test regimes.

Some proposals have also suggested including minibuses (passenger vehicles with more than eight seats and less than 17) within these testing regimes, particularly where they are based on conversions of LCVs.

However, there are concerns that increasing the standard of self protection would result in stiffer structures that would be more aggressive to the collision partners of such vehicles, potentially reducing the net benefit of such a change or even increasing the net number of casualties.

An analysis of GB accident data has been undertaken to identify the scale and priority of accidents involving LCVs and minibuses. This has identified a target population of fatalities that might benefit from selected secondary safety interventions and also those that might be at risk of unintended consequences from those interventions.