THE RAC Foundation is urging car manufacturers to consider further in-car safety features as research suggests that overweight motorists are more than twice as likely to be killed or seriously injured in an accident than lighter people.

Its medical advisor, Dr Tony Lavelle, feels there could be several factors influencing the severity of accidents among obese drivers.

These include overweight people being more prone to sleep disorders. Seat belts and air bags are generally designed for average-sized people, car interiors not suitably designed for heavier people and emergency services finding it more difficult to remove larger occupants from crashed vehicles.

The Foundation suggests a number of measures, including the introduction of smart air bags that react to the position of the seat or weight on the seat, better design of seat belts to give more protection to occupants of different shapes and sizes and greater use of different sizes of crash test dummies in development of vehicles.