Compendium of Papers

Emissions and Fuel Consumption Estimation for Vehicles on the

Road and Involved in Injury Collisions
Rben Silva, Guilhermina Torro, Margarida C. Coelho*
Centre for Mechanical Technology and Automation / Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitrio de
Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
*
Corresponding author: margarida.coelho@ua.pt

Abstract
The European Commission (EC) imposed mandatory CO2 emissions of 130 g/km by 2015 for the new vehicle models. The
European New Car Assessment Program (EuroNCAP) promotes safety developments, and credits car manufacturers for
focusing on safety. Despite of EC regulations and EuroNCAP safety reinforcement, environmental and safety performances
must be optimized by the automotive industry. The main objective of the current research was to analyze the effect of
vehicles characteristics on crash severity, emissions and fuel use. For the safety and emissions analysis, the technical
information of engine size, weight, wheelbase and age for those vehicles involved in injury collisions was extracted from a
crash dataset. This dataset was developed for real crashes gathered for the time period of 2006-2008, in Portugal. A binary
logistic model was developed to analyze the effect of vehicles characteristics on crash severity. Copert IV methodology was
applied for to estimate the emissions of those vehicles. Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) methodology was applied to estimate
emissions and consumption for two alternative routes choice: a motorway and a national rural road, that connect Aveiro and
Porto cities, in Portugal. The preliminary safety research findings showed that engine size has an important effect on crash
severity. The emissions and fuel consumption were lower for diesel vehicles, except for nitrogen oxides and particulate
matter.
2012 The Authors.
Keywords: Copert IV; crashes; emissions; fuel consumption; vehicles; VSP

1. Introduction and Research Objectives

During the past decennia there has been a steady increase in traffic volume, which has resulted in
continuously increasing traffic congestion-related problems, such as pollutants emissions, delays, crashes,
injuries and casualties and economical losses. Recent status on road safety from World Health Organization
(WHO) showed that more than 1.2 million people die on the worlds roads every year (WHO, 2009). The latest
road safety indicators from the Portuguese National Authority for Road Safety (ANSR) show that during the year
2010, there have been a total of 35,426 crashes with injuries and fatalities on the Portuguese mainland roads. As
consequence, there were 741 fatalities and 2637 serious injuries (ANSR, 2011). Crash testing is an information
resource for consumers. However, EuroNCAP discourages consumers from comparing ratings of cars from
different segments, and in real crashes, there is obviously no control on the vehicle categories involved

EWGT2012 Compendium of Papers

(EuroNCAP, 2009a, 2009b).

The main goal of this research was to analyze the effect of vehicle characteristics on safety, emissions and
fuel consumption. The three specific objectives for this research were:
- To assess whether vehicle characteristics impact crash severity;
- To estimate emissions for vehicles involved in real road crashes, with Copert IV methodology;
- To compare the emissions estimates and fuel consumption for two alternative routes by applying the VSP
methodology.
The paper is organized as follows: chapter 2 provides a literature review, followed by methodology in chapter
3, results and discussion in chapter 4, and finally conclusions in chapter 5.

2. Literature Review
In the literature, most attention is paid to vehicle type and risk to the drivers, but not to its relation to
crashworthiness. There is a lack of a methodology to estimate the effect of vehicles characteristics with the
overall crash severity during vehicles collisions.
Several studies have attempted to correlate safety and vehicle design features. Evans (2004) explored vehicle
mass and size, and concluded that those variables are strongly correlated, which makes it difficult to determine
the separate contribution of mass and size on crash risk. Wood and Simms (1997) showed that in collisions
between cars of similar size, the fundamental parameters which determine the injury risk is associated to the size,
i.e. the length of the vehicle. Furthermore, in collisions involving two cars of different size, the use of EuroNCAP
ranking is not the most proper way to compare different safety performance, mainly due to the mass difference
between the two vehicles involved in the crash (Coelho et al., 2010). Broughton showed that the driver casualty
rate decreases with the size of his car, however the driver casualty increases with the size of the other car
involved in the collision (Broughton, 2008). More recently, Wenzel (2010) suggested that the vehicle design
would have a greater effect on occupant safety than fuel economy standards.
Previous studies related to crash analyses have used a broad spectrum of statistical models. For example,
statistical regression models are very popular to estimate injury severity (Li and Bai, 2008; Bedard et al., 2002;
Boufous et al., 2008; Al-Ghamdi, 2002; and Chang and Wang, 2006). Kononen et al. (2011) have developed a
logistic model for predicting serious injuries in vehicle crashes. However, regression models have assumptions
and underlying relationships between the dependent and independent variables (Chang and Wang, 2006).
Regarding fuel economy standards, Chen and Kockelman (2012) study suggested that moderate changes in
vehicle weights and wheelbase are estimated to have small impacts on crash severity.
In summary, much has been said about the high risk of low-mass cars in certain kinds of collisions, with focus
only in the drivers injuries or fatalities and excluding vehicles passengers. There is no doubt that vehicle design
can influence not only avoidance and crashworthiness, but also whether it endangers the occupants of the other
vehicle(s) involved in the collision. In the preceding studies, the effect of differential vehicle weight and size and
its impact on overall crash severity has not been studied. Hence, further research is needed to address the issue of
the vehicle technical data effect on road crash risk, expressed by injuries or fatalities risk to all the occupants
within the vehicles involved in the crash. In addition, the authors did not find any word on the trade-off of two
different impacts (road safety and emissions / fuel use).
3. Methodology
The motivation for this research was to focus on the vehicle fleet characteristics and analyze those that might
have a stronger impact on crash severity, which is expressed by the risk to drivers and passengers, based on realworld crash data. This analysis explores the contribution of vehicle specific characteristics on crash severity and

EWGT2012 Compendium of Papers

on vehicles emissions and fuel independent. The independent variables in the dataset include: make and model,
weight (mass), engine size (power), wheelbase, year of registration (age) and fuel type. Dependent variables were
related to the occurrence or number of severe injuries and/or fatalities of the vehicles occupants. The research
focused exclusively on post-crash consequences rather than on pre-crash contributing factors to the event, such as
driver behavior or drivers age. Figure 1 summarizes the steps that were developed, which includes the
preliminary findings presented in this paper.

Figure 1 Methodology overview towards an integrated analysis of environmental, fuel efficiency and safety vehicle performance.

3.1
Crash Selection and Dataset Development
Data for the crash severity predictive model were collected from the Road Traffic Departments of the
Portuguese Road Safety Police National Republican Guard (GNR). Crash reports that involved injuries and/or
fatalities outcomes were exclusively selected. A total of 1345 crashes reports were gathered for a time period
from 2006 to 2008, for the urban areas of Aveiro and Porto, in Portugal. The vehicle technical features were
requested to the Portuguese Institute for the Mobility and Inland Transportation (IMTT) and vehicle technical
detailed information for 25% of the crashes (342/1354) was obtained. An integrated database was developed
where each crash record and technical characteristics for each vehicle involved in the collision were combined
into a unique crash observation.
The developed database included a specification sheet for technical attributes of the vehicles registration plate.
An example of the vehicles characteristics acquired from those databases is listed below: Brand (Toyota), Model
(Corolla), Wheelbase (2465 mm), Size (4095 mm), Weight (1045 kg), Engine Size (1332 cm3), Fuel (Gasoline).
3.2
Statistical Analysis
For the safety analysis and crash severity predictive modeling the Software, SAS v9.2 and SASEnterprise
MinnerTM6.2 was applied (SAS Institute Inc., 2009). The response variable (target) was driven from the crash
outcomes, which were expressed by the number of injuries and/or fatalities, amongst the vehicles occupants. The

EWGT2012 Compendium of Papers

Target was converted to a binary variable to define the probability of a Serious Injury or Fatality in a crash, and it
was defined as FatalSIK. Hence if FatalSIK1 the crash was severe. On the other hand, if FatalSIK0 the crash
was non severe. A binary logistic regression model was developed to predict the probability of a crash outcome
resulting in FatalSIK1.
A detailed description of a database as well as an overview of the safety models is described elsewhere
(Torro et al., 2011).
3.2. Fuel Consumption and Emissions
The estimation of road traffic emissions and fuel consumption was based on the application of two models:
Copert IV (CORINAIR, 2010) and VSP (US EPA, 2002; Frey et al., 2008). Copert IV is based on the European
emission standards which are related to the acceptable limits for emissions of new vehicles sold in EU member
states. Emission standards for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles are coded as Euro Stage: Euro1 to
Euro 5 based on the year that the vehicle model starts to be sold in the market. EU regulations introduce different
emission limits for diesel and gasoline vehicles. This model was used to estimate the emissions for the vehicles
involved in injury collisions, at the crash dataset. Vehicles attributes, such as, engine size, model year (age) and
fuel type were used as input, and road speed limit, as well.
The VSP methodology was applied to estimate the emissions/fuel use for two alternative routes: a motorway
and a national road. For light duty vehicles the following equation is used:
VSP = v[1.1a + 9.81sin(atan(grade)) + 0.132] + 0.000302v3

(1)

where VSP is the vehicle specific power (m2/s3); v is the instantaneous vehicle speed (m/s); a is the instantaneous
acceleration (m2/s); grade is the road grade (%).
In this methodology, vehicle fuel use and emissions are stratified in 14 bins interval classification, from bin 1
through bin 14. Hence, bins 1 and 2, with negative values of VSP, are related to the deceleration or travel on the
downgrade. Bin 3 addresses the emissions during idling periods. Bins 4 to 14 refers to increasing VSP values,
related with higher speeds and accelerations. Each VSP Bin category is assumed to generate a fixed emission rate
for each pollutant. The average emission rates by VSP bin for gasoline and diesel vehicles are indicated
elsewhere (Coelho et al., 2009; Frey et al., 2008; US EPA, 2002).
The totals for fuel use or emissions for a given scenario were calculated by multiplying the standardized
average rates with the average route travel time. Since the crash population was gathered for the Porto
metropolitan area, two routes were chosen to connect Aveiro and Porto cities. The two selected routes were the
national road EN109 and the Motorway A29 and typical speed profiles previously measured in those roads were
applied (Bandeira et al., 2011, 2012). The authorized speed limits are 90km/h and 120km/h for EN109 and A29,
respectively. The extension of the EN109 route is approximately 74 km, while for A29 is 76 km.

4. Results and Discussion

This chapter presents the initial results for the safety analysis, followed by emissions estimates for the vehicles
included in the crash dataset. Finally, a comparison of emissions and fuel use for two alternative routes is also
discussed.
4.1. Safety Modeling Logistic Regression for FatalSIK
During the data mining analysis, several types of models were attempted, and the target and the outcome

EWGT2012 Compendium of Papers

percentage of each model were evaluated. The selected model to predict the target FatalSIK, based on the total
profit for the training dataset (for those 342 crash observations) is illustrated in Figure 2 and described by the
analytical equation indicated below.

(2)
where P(Y=1) is the probability of a serious and/or fatality occurrence (FatalSIK1) during a two vehicle
collision, and ccV2 is the engine size for vehicle V2 involved in the crash.

Figure 2 Effect of Engine Size of Vehicle 2 on FatalSIK for two-vehicle collisions

The likelihood ratio test for the global null hypothesis showed a Pr>ChiSq value of 0.0148. The analysis of
the maximum likelihood estimates for the intercept and the ccV2 showed a Pr>ChiSq <0.0001 and 0.0106,
respectively. The misclassification rate was 0.05. Despite the fact that these statistics were acceptable (low
misclassification) and the finding that ccV2 was found to be of statistical importance, the predictive model did
not have a satisfactory performance for the minority class being predicted, FatalSIK1. The percentage
predictions matching the target 0 was 95.3% and those severe crashes which were misclassified as non-severe
were at 4.7%. This analysis showed that in the training sample, the model predicts correctly all the non-severe
crashes (FatalSIK0), however all the true positive (16 in total) were predicted as non-severe as well.
4.2. Road Traffic Emissions and Fuel Estimation CopertIV and VSP Models
For the road traffic emissions analysis, Figure 3 shows the CO2 emissions based on Copert IV methodology
for the vehicles involved in injury collisions. The illustrated CO2 emissions for passengers cars with gasoline
engine are presented as function of vehicles age, in roads where the legal speed limit is set at 120 km/h. For the
same vehicle engine size category, the newer models tend to emit less CO2, when compared with older vehicles
models of the same engine size category. The results showed that engine size and speed have a strong effect in
CO2 emissions. Figure 4 presents the results for CO2 emissions based on the VSP methodology. Gasoline
vehicles emitted lower rates of CO2 emissions when compared with diesel vehicle engines. This finding is
consistent with recent research (Wenzel, 2010; An et al., 2011).

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Figure 3 CO2 estimations for light duty vehicles with gasoline engine vs. vehicles age, in routes with 120 km/h speed limit, by Copert IV.

Figure 4 CO2 emissions (g/km) for gasoline vehicles (blue bars) and diesel vehicles (green bars) based on the average speed per kilometer
(red line), by VSP methodology.

EWGT2012 Compendium of Papers

Figure 5 Fuel estimation for two different routes: EN109 and A29.

Figure 5 presents the fuel estimation results based on the VSP methodology. The average fuel consumption
was higher at the EN109 when compared to the A29.
Even though A29 is a longer route (two kilometers more) and the expected average speed levels higher for
motorways, the fuel demand was lower than in EN109. In main roads there are usually more traffic congestion
and the speed profile tend to have more fluctuations, hence imposing higher fuel consumption. On the other hand,
CO and NOx emissions rates were higher at A29 route.
5. Conclusions
The main conclusions of this study can be drawn in terms of the following findings:
- The binary logistic regression model for the FatalSIK prediction showed that the engine size of vehicle V2
increases the probability of a serious and/or fatal in a two vehicles collision.
- Regarding VSP emission results for the analysis of the effect of route choice (motorway and alternative
route), driving in national road EN109 required 33% more fuel consumption when compared with the driven in
the motorway A29. In addition, CO2 emissions were higher when travelling in the EN109.
- Regarding vehicles safety, emissions and fuel economy, engine size was proven a significant attribute and
this variable affects not only the crash severity outcome as it increases the CO2 emissions, and consequently, the
fuel consumption.
Future work will be focused on the development of a multi-objective analysis, in order to assess both
dimensions (safety and emissions) and create an indicator that describes the existing trade-off. Further, a new
strategy to plan road safety and environment policies must address not only the vehicle fleet, but also the route
choice taken by the drivers.

Acknowledgements
This work is funded by FEDER through the Operation Program Factores de Competitividade COMPETE
and by National Funds through FCT Fundao para a Cincia e a Tecnologia within the project PTDC/SENTRA/113499/2009. The authors also acknowledge the support of FCT for the Scholarship SFRH/BD/4135/2007.

EWGT2012 Compendium of Papers

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