Side-Impact Stats.Some 8,000 people are killed annually in the United States in side-impact or what some refer to as “T-bone” collisions. Moreover, due to the growing popularity of SUVs among those who have kids, vulnerability to side-impact fatalities is particularly high among children with annual child fatalities growing by 20% over the past two decades. These are some of the reasons why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) incorporated a gauge of side impact protection for vehicles known as the “dynamic pole test” into one of its Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards – standards that apply to all vehicles on U.S. roads.
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Notably, utilizing the 2017 aggregate figure discussed above, those 8,000 side-impact deaths amount to roughly 21.5% of the 37,133 total annual automotive collision fatalities in the United States. In other words, over 1 in 5 fatalities on the road are due to the very problem that this invention has been designed and tested for. Even if that proportion was 1 in 20, that would be significant but 1 in 5 indicates that the mass adoption of Side Safety could be momentous in its life-saving potential.
Moreover, considering that there were roughly 1.9 million injuries from automotive collisions in 2017 and assuming that roughly the same proportion of injury-inducing collisions were of the side-impact variety, that means that approximately 400,000 of those injuries pertain to this discussion. In other words, aside from 8,000 deaths, the patented Side-Safety innovation is also likely to significantly reduce some 400,000 annual road injuries.
However, all of America’s annual 6.45 million accidents – even those in which drivers and passengers are not injured or killed – involve at least some form of property damage. According to the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT), those 6.45 million accidents cost the United States $230.6 billion annually. Again, applying the same side-impact proportion that applies to fatalities under the reasonable assumption that, if 21.5% of road fatalities are attributable to side-impact crashes then a similar proportion applies to overall crashes, that means that Side Safety is designed to address a $49.6 billion problem. While that proportion may not apply exactly, it’s safe to assume that side-impact crashes cost this country at least $40 billion each year.
Prospective Market Size
According to the latest (2017) figures, a total of 272.5 million motor vehicles are registered in the United States. The figures include passenger cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, and other vehicles. Considering that over 6 million additional vehicles are sold each year, the 2019 total is probably closer to 285 million. With the possible exception of some very old cars with brakes and rear brake lights that no longer work properly, pretty much all of those cars could be fitted with the Side-Safety brake light system. Even estimating very conservatively that 5% of the 2017 total of 272.5 million registered vehicles in the U.S. could not be fitted with the invention, that still leaves an enormous domestic market of 258,875,000 vehicles.