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Rational design for fire safety necessarily includes consideration of risk tradeoffs that tend to reduce one risk but may increase another. Traditional engineering design criteria can be supplemented with important factors that rely on expertise from other disciplines. Engineering analysis may be able to address reduction in fire risk due to the introduction of new technology, but may not address the social costs associated with this new technology. For example, the resultant increase in vehicle cost may prevent some people from purchasing a vehicle (impacting individuals' lives), may reduce the number of vehicles sold (impacting manufacturers), and may reduce taxes collected (impacting the government). This must be weighed against decreased risk of property damage, injury, and fatality due to fire. In this paper, the methods of benefit-cost analysis from economics were applied to make this evaluation.

The process of design inherently involves consideration of risk trade offs; intervening to reduce one risk often increases another. In addition to creating a design for the intended function of the product, a rational process of risk management involves prediction of risk through design analysis, statistical evaluation of the history of similar products, and potentially multidisciplinary teams to address diverse causes of risk. As a case study, this paper examines the benefits of using one class of fire retardant to reduce risk of vehicle fire injuries and the countervailing health risk due to increased quantities of fire retardants released in the interior environment. Data sources for fire and health risk were researched and interpreted for use in the analysis. Information needed to reduce the uncertainties in the risk predictions are identified for future refinements to the conclusions.

Statistical studies of collision and non-collision fires abound, founded upon information in publicly available collision and fire incident data bases. Recent efforts to improve the quality and reliability of the data within such databases have included the development of vehicle fire investigator training materials for motor vehicle crash investigators. These materials will be available to investigators both as a computer-based training system for remote learning and as a classroom seminar. When completed, the computer-based training course will be publicly available. The computer-based training course is based on published and unpublished research on vehicle fires, material properties and ignition characteristics. Topics include a discussion of combustible fluids and materials, ignition sources, burn patterns, arson, hybrid vehicles and vehicle design, as well as background information on fire science, automotive systems, and design and investigation standards.

During investigations of automobile collisions involving fire, some cases were observed in which the sources of ignition were quite subtle. In one, the only liquid fuel available was coolant and the only ignition source near the observed burn damage was the internal sparking of a cooling fan motor. Questions raised from this example and others led to further research of minimum ignition energies of automobile underhood fluids and the spark energies available from electric motors. Through laboratory measurements and analysis, the minimum ignition energy of ethylene-glycol-based coolant and spark energies available from operation of electric motors in automobiles were estimated. Comparisons of the spark energies available and the minimum ignition energy of underhood fluids confirmed the potential for ignition from motor sparks. Some questions still remain for further study.

Since Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 301 was first issued in 1967, many studies of collision-fires have been conducted. Most of the studies were analyses of motor vehicle crash databases providing little detailed information as to likely fuels involved in ignition, ignition sources, propagation paths and times, and injury mechanisms. This paper presents the results of case studies and preliminary findings from on-going investigations of motor vehicle collisions involving fire. Twenty one field investigations of incidents involving automobiles, pickup trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles were conducted. Three incidents have been selected for presentation to demonstrate program methodology and characteristic factors of collision-fires. Results showed that the causes and severities of collision-related fires can vary widely and depend on numerous and complex factors. Field investigations can provide a perspective usually unavailable to fire researchers.

Statistical studies of collision and non-collision fires abound, founded upon information in publicly available collision and fire incident data bases. Recent efforts to improve the quality and reliability of the data within such databases have included the development of vehicle fire investigator training materials for motor vehicle crash investigators. These materials will be available to investigators both as a computer-based training system for remote learning and as a classroom seminar. When completed, the computer-based training course will be publicly available. The computer-based training course is based on published and unpublished research on vehicle fires, material properties and ignition characteristics. Topics include a discussion of combustible fluids and materials, ignition sources, burn patterns, arson, hybrid vehicles and vehicle design, as well as background information on fire science, automotive systems, and design and investigation standards.

Existing vehicle design guidelines for fire safety can be found in government and industry standards and are often interpreted in product liability law suits. In this paper, the authors review the nature of the guidelines and conclude that they are inconsistently interpreted and insufficiently articulated for the optimization of fire safety design. Cooperation is also often inhibited by the differing perspectives of government and industry and the adversarial nature of the legal system. Clarification of design principles that are agreed upon by industry and government, and applied uniformly by the courts would necessarily enhance the safety of vehicles and efficiency of resource allocation. Because risk can never be fully eliminated, agreement can only be achieved if there is an understanding of “acceptable risk” to balance the motivations of safety and profit.