Yellow Taxis: Less Prone To Accidents

Riding Yellow Is Riding Safer

Out of the National University of Singapore comes a new study that established a link between a taxi’s color and its accident rate. The study is saying that the higher the visibility of a vehicle’s color (as in this case, yellow taxis), the less likely it is to get into an accident.

An analysis of two fleets of taxis in Singapore, one yellow, the other blue, ran 36 months where taxi, driver and accident data were studied. It suggests that yellow taxis have fewer accidents than blue ones. Due to the high visibility of yellow cabs they have a lower accident rate.

The research team analysed available data from Singapore’s largest taxi company, which involved millions of observations on the company’s drivers and taxis, and accidents involving these taxis. From 4,175 yellow taxis and 12,525 blue taxis, it was found that yellow taxis have about 6.1 fewer accidents per 1,000 taxis per month. This translates to the physical risk to the passenger calculated over the course of a 40 year period that a passenger will experience 1.1 accidents in a blue taxi, compared to 1 accident in a yellow taxi. That’s a 9 per cent reduction in accident rate.

This can also translate to cost savings for the taxi operator. If the Singapore taxi company would agree to switch all his blue taxis to yellow (that’s at a current ratio of 1 yellow to 3 blues), with an an average repair cost of S$1,000 per cab and a downtime of six days, the company would have 76.6 fewer accidents per month or 917 fewer accidents per year. It’s an annual savings of S$2.0 million for the operator.

The findings of the study also suggest that colour visibility should play a major role in determining the colours used for public transport vehicles. The results are also useful to smaller taxi companies and to drivers who use their private vehicles as taxis to work for private-hire car services. The use of yellow in other types of public transport, such as school buses, can make these vehicles a safer ride for its target passengers, like children in this case.

The findings of the study were published in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Help For Any Color Vehicle in Seattle

While your auto body shop in Seattle get to see a variety of vehicle collisions involving cars and taxis of varying colors, it may be safe to say that vehicles of high visibility color do have less accident rates. Bring in any repair job of any color into our shop and get topnotch service, from one of Seattle’s best.