Prediction on N1 Injury Severity Correlating Operational Speed

Abstract

Growth of e-retailing business has brought to the growth of Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) on the roads. It is estimated that LCV accounted for about 40% shares of total vehicle production in ASEAN market. Unfortunately, since there is no vehicle safety regulation imposed, almost 80 percent of small lorry and light panel van which falls under Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) segment was not designed to meet minimum vehicle safety standards. Even though, only 6% of the total fatalities involving goods vehicles were reported in Malaysia, the fatality index per 10,000 respective vehicles was 2.6 which is almost as high as the fatality index for motorcycles (3.0) in 2018. By allowing this vehicle to operate on public roadways, we are introducing into the traffic mix a vehicle with questionable stability and crash protection. As consequences, this will increase the risk of accident severity among this vehicle category. Acknowledging the fact that speed is one of the contributory factors to traffic crashes, this study was carried out to correlate the operational speed of N1 vehicles with the ASEAN NCAP crash test results. The results of the 5 models of N1 vehicles tested by ASEAN NCAP were used as a surrogate data for small lorry and panel van observed on the roads. Based on the speed data, it was found that about 65% of the small lorry drivers were at risk of sustaining severe injury level of AIS3+ while for panel van driver, 57% of them would experience HIC15 of MAIS 3+ injury.