Abstract
Since the introduction of safety belts in vehicles in the mid 60's, road vehicles have incorporated new safety systems, firstly passive safety systems to reduce consequences of accidents and, subsequently, active safety systems to prevent the occurrence of accidents. There are several studies in the international literature that try to analyze the potential effect of some of these systems, using different methods for evaluating the impact. In this study we compare these results, showing the similarities and differences between them. Moreover, safety equipment is much more widespread among high-performance vehicles but nowadays lower range ones also incorporate many of these advances. However, the safety equipment is usually shorter in vans. This is analyzed quantitatively for the case of the Spanish fleet of vans, considering vehicles registered since 2000. In particular, the presence of equipment such as xenon headlights, ABS, traction control, electronic stability control, speed limiter, seat belt pretensioners, airbags for driver and passenger, side airbags and head airbags, is analyzed in the vehicles that run in 2008 in Spain.
Finally, we study the effect of renewing the fleet of vans including some of the safety systems that have been generalized in passenger cars in recent years. To do this, we used the following sources of information:
- Data of the presence of safety systems in the vans in 2008
- Injury accidents in Spain in 2008
- Studies of the effectiveness of safety systems
Keywords: van, safety, renewal, effectiveness, accidents