In the United States last year, the total number of reported vehicle fires fell 5 percent from the 312,000 reported in 2003 to 297,000, according to a recent report from the National Fire Protection Association. This was the smallest vehicle fire incidence since NFPA began tracking vehicle fires and losses with its current methods.
The largest proportion of those fires, 266,500, occurred in cars, trucks, and other highway vehicles, as opposed to boats, aircraft, mass-transit vehicles, and agricultural and construction vehicles. Not surprisingly, most of the fatalities associated with vehicle fires also occurred among the drivers of highway vehicles. In 2004, 520 civilian deaths resulted from vehicle fires, along with 1,300 civilian injuries and $1.3 billion in direct property damage. Vehicle fires accounted for 19 percent of the fires reported to fire departments that year. Vehicle fires also caused 14 percent of all civilian fire deaths, 8 percent of all civilian fire injuries, and 13 percent of the nation's property loss to fire in 2004.
Since 1980, reported vehicle fires have fallen 37 percent compared to a 51-percent drop in reported structure fires and a 48-percent drop in fires of all types. The thrust of efforts to prevent fire and associated losses in the United States has primarily been in making structures less fire-prone and more fire-safe. The fire community has given only intermittent attention to vehicle fires, and that attention has focused narrowly on major multiple-death incidents, noted Marty Ahrens of the NFPA's Fire Analysis and Research Division.
NFPA advocates additional and more in-depth fire testing of automobiles to increase knowledge of how fires develop. "This detailed information can provide engineers with the information needed to develop solutions to the automobile fire death problem, similar to the advances, such as the air bag, that have resulted from collision testing," said Ahrens. "Through redesign, we can produce more fire-safe automobiles."
NFPA also has allied with the American Automobile Association and professional fire fighters to increase drivers' awareness of the issue. The groups have outlined several objectives pertaining to deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes. Reducing deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes in general and from alcohol-related crashes, reducing the proportion of adolescents who rode with a driver who had been drinking, and making the maximum blood alcohol concentration 0.08 percent for drivers over 21 years old could decrease the number of people who are killed by fires caused by collisions, NFPA noted.
"In 2004, highway vehicle fires caused more deaths than apartment fires," said James M. Shannon, NFPA's president. "The public needs to be more aware of this serious fire safety issue and take measures to lessen the risk of an incident."
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