http://drivesteady.com/are-small-cars-really-safe-in-the-united-states-of-suvs
This article discusses the safety of small cars in the United States. The safety of small cars is analyzed by a variety of administrations and institutions including: the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. One of the issues they bring up in the article about the safety of small cars is that their safety is only compared to like size cars. That is the crash test rating system employed by the government gives out ratings that compare cars that are of the same size, so a small car could get a good rating if it is safe relative to other small cars. In addition to the crash test employed by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety has run tests to asses the safety of small cars. Test results show that side impact collisions for a small car being hit by a large SUV can cause significant damage to the driver in the small car. Overall, the article remains inconclusive about the safety of small cars in a country with large SUV’s, and reminds one to be weary of the lack of safety when buying a small car.
One could think of the issues with small and large cars in terms of game theory. In this situation there are the two large car producers in United States that act as the “players” in the game. For the sake of simplifying the game lets say each firm can choose to either produce large cars or small cars. Let’s pretend their profit is related to both size of car and safety (safety increases the number of consumers). If both companies decide to build small cars, both make a medium profit because the safety of small cars are high but they are only selling small cars. Another situation is where both companies produce large SUV’s. The payoffs for both companies is high because the SUV’s are safe and they cost more than small cars. The final choice is where one company decides to build a small car and one company builds a large car. The company that builds the small car gets a very small profit because it is a small car and unsafe. The company that builds a large car when the other builds a small car gets a lot of money because they are the only ones selling a SUV and the SUV’s is safe. In the end it is likely both firms make large SUV’s. From a simply payoff matrix like this it is easy to see that there is no reason car companies will decide to only make small cars in the future. The only hope is that the regulations get stricter so smaller fuel efficient cars can drive on the road with higher safety.