In a new paper to be published next month (Influence of obesity on mortality of drivers in severe motor vehicle crashes) Dr. Dietrich Jehle finds that obese drivers make up a disproportionate number of automobile fatalities.
Might one simple explanation be that fat people drive more than their more physically-active counterparts? It isn’t clear from reading the abstract whether researchers considered this possibility. Instead, Dr. Jehle hypothesizes that seat belts and airbags are not tested for plus-sized adults.
“Crash test dummies have saved lives and provided invaluable data on how human bodies react to crashes, but they are designed to represent normal-weight individuals. If they represented our overweight American society, there could be further improvements in vehicle design that could decrease mortality.”
Needless to say, his proposed solution does not involve crash diets.
He argues that crash test dummies should be ‘super-sized’ to reflect our rotund reality. And cars would be re-designed to accommodate super-sized drivers.
Dr Jehle said extending the range of adjustable seats and encouraging obese people to buy larger cars with more space between the seat and the steering column could save lives. ‘The rate of obesity is continuing to rise, so is it imperative that car designs are modified to protect the obese population, and that crash tests are done using a full range of dummy sizes,’ he added.
This country already suffers from an overabundance of SUV’s, to recommend supersized car designs as a health measure would be stupid and ironic. At the rate we are going, cars of the future will come standard with insulin pumps and heart monitors.
Even in the US, most people are within a healthy weight range, and dont want to be reaching for the steering wheel.
The fact that the study didn’t consider the idea of fat people driving more (which has already been shown in many studies, hasnt it?) makes it sound not so credible.
Additionally, id assume that a healthier person would be more likely to survive a severe accident.
I agree with your message, but your question of “Might one simple explanation be that fat people drive more than their more physically-active counterparts?” is misguided.
I work in a research lab at a university so I have access to this journal. They describe that this data is taken from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database. Inclusion in the database requires that there be a fatality in a “severe motor vehicle crash.”
I’m no good with statistics, but it says in the methods that “There is a selection bias in cases entered into the FARS database, requiring a death in each crash.” They seem to have combined this data with the number of fatalities out of total occupants, and from that (and probably some other data) derived the odds of death based on BMI. On the face at least, it seems legitimate.
Interestingly, the a morbidly obese person has a 60% higher chance of dying than a normal weight person, and an obese person has a 20% higher chance, but underweight females also have a 10% higher chance, and have “overweight” (according to BMI) people have a very slightly, but statistically significant, lower chance of death.
I mostly make this post to encourage you not to make judgments about the content or motives behind a paper based solely on the abstract. That’s not what they’re for, and they will always be necessarily limited in the amount of information and context they can provide.
Also, I think it’s fair to suggest at least over-sized crash test dummies. I realize there may be a number of follow up complications and moral gray areas if this were pursued, but if our current crash test dummies aren’t accurately representing the reality of a car crash for a large percentage of our population, I think that’s an important problem.
I’m less in support of custom cars for overweight people, but I think car manufacturers will be too so I’m not sure it’s something we need to worry a whole lot about. Probably good to be wary of any impending regulation regarding this kind of stuff, though.