Drivers have been running an 'arms race' on American roads by buying increasingly heavy vehicles such as SUVs, vans and light trucks. Families view large vehicles as providing better protection to their own occupants if a crash occurs, but these vehicles pose an increased danger to occupants of smaller vehicles and to pedestrians and bicyclists. This paper measures both the beneficial internal effect and the negative external effect of heavier vehicles. The main result is that when drivers replace cars with light trucks, 3,700 additional crashes per year involving fatalities of smaller vehicle occupants, pedestrians and bicyclists occur, while only 1,400 crashes involving fatalities of light truck occupants are avoided, i.e., the ratio of negative external effects to positive internal effects is 2« to 1. The paper argues that none of the existing traffic laws or institutions forces drivers of heavy vehicles to take account of their negative external effects.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
9302.
Length: Date of creation: Nov 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9302
Note: LE PE Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Find related papers by JEL classification: R4 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Transportation Systems K1 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: