How dangerous are traffic accidents caused by low-speed vehicles? One indicator used to quantify the degree of danger of traffic accidents is the fatal accident rate. The fatal accident rate is the proportion of fatal accidents in the total number of traffic accidents causing injuries and deaths, calculated as follows:
Fatal accident rate (%) = Number of fatal accidents ÷ Number of fatal/injury accidents × 100
The fatal accident rate for 2007 is shown in Fig. 7, by collision speed range. It is clear that the rate rises as the speed increases. The chance of a fatal accident is less than 1% in the speed range 11−20 km/h, but the risk becomes 16 times greater at 41−50 km/h and 31 times greater at 51−60 km/h.
It would be ideal if we could avoid all collisions between vehicles and pedestrians as a result of taking measures to reduce fatal accidents, but even when a collision is unavoidable, we can achieve a significantly low fatal accident rate by reducing the collision speed to the minimum possible range.
Now that we have seen the very low risk of fatal accidents in the low speed range compared to the medium/high speed range, let's consider the reasons why as many as 300 fatal accidents still happen every year despite a low collision speed of less than 20 km/h.
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