Vehicle hostility

Ok, driving is the most dangerous activity we do. I understand that, do what I can to reduce that risk to me.

The market has a perfectly viable lever, which it uses pretty effectively these days, to sell us all cars which will keep the occupants of the cars safer . Crumple zones, airbags, auto unlocking, all wonderful stuff.

However. There is no marketing edge, as yet anyway, in producing cars which make other road users safer, or at least less threatened. I fear that pressure towards cars that are less damaging towards other road users must initiate with some form of legislation. After all, at present there is no substantial disadvantage to owning and using a car which is going to inflict maximal damage on any other cars or other road users unfortunate to be involved in a collision with it.

Therefore I propose a measure of the damage which a vehicle inflicts on other vehicles. This measure would probably be known formally be some mouthful of a name like "third-party repercussion appraisal rating" but for the purpose of this discussion I'll call "vehicle hostility". This rating could then be used (for example) as a multiplier on any fines arising from antisocial road use - speeding, running red lights, failure to indicate, etc.

The components of the rating should eventually be statistically demonstrated damage enhancers, but that might take too long given the present state of accident information. In my scheme, hostility starts at a value of 1, standard acceptable hostility. I'm not sure if vehicles that are less hostile than "standard" should gain anything but I can see an argument for allowing trade-off between different factors, eg. high weight and low rigidity. I'll propose some components that feel like they ought to play a part:

Weight: if weight >1000kg, multiply hostility by weight/10000kg
Width: Similar for over-standard width
Overhang: If the vehicle extends outside wheel base by a significant amount this should also increase hostility
Rigidity: I'm not sure how to measure this but it also plays a part.
Clearance: Vehicles high off the road will do more damage
Fittings: Standard hostility multipliers for bull (roo) bars and other injury-enhancing fittings
Articulation: Towed or flexing will generally increase the chance of injuring/damaging more than otherwise.

With time this might allow the fear of increased penalties to drive vehicles in the direction of doing less damage to others as well as protecting the occupants.