SUVs and Safety
The "safety gap" between sport-utility vehicles and passenger cars is widening:
The gap in safety between sport utility vehicles and passenger cars last year was the widest yet recorded, according to new federal traffic data.People driving or riding in a sport utility vehicle in 2003 were nearly 11 percent more likely to die in an accident than people in cars, the figures show. The government began keeping detailed statistics on the safety of vehicle categories in 1994.
So SUVs aren't just killing people in the cars they hit, they're also killing people who ride in them, primarily because their higher ground clearance makes them more susceptible to rolling over. And yet a lot of people think SUVs are somehow safer than passenger cars.
They're not, of course, as Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-seller "The Tipping Point," wrote earlier this year in The New Yorker:
The truth, underneath all the rationalizations, seemed to be that S.U.V. buyers thought of big, heavy vehicles as safe: they found comfort in being surrounded by so much rubber and steel. To the engineers, of course, that didn't make any sense, either: if consumers really wanted something that was big and heavy and comforting, they ought to buy minivans, since minivans, with their unit-body construction, do much better in accidents than S.U.V.s. (In a thirty-five-m.p.h. crash test, for instance, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade--the G.M. counterpart to the Lincoln Navigator--has a sixteen-per-cent chance of a life-threatening head injury, a twenty-per-cent chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a leg injury. The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan--a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame--are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent.) But this desire for safety wasn't a rational calculation. It was a feeling.
I don't hate SUVs or even begrudge them to anyone else. But I spent several years in my 20s going out to fatal wrecks, and so I won't buy an SUV. (Won't buy a motorcycle, either.) Your mileage, of course, may vary.
So if you're not into off-roading, you don't need one to get to work in winter weather and you know SUVs aren't as safe as passenger cars, why would you buy one?
Comments (10)
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You buy them for the excellent gas mileage, of course!
Posted on August 17, 2004 2:00 PM
D'oh!
:: slaps head in self-disgust a la Chris Farley ::
Of course!
Posted on August 17, 2004 2:18 PM
I think the roll-over issue is secondary. Seems to me that the biggest safety issue with SUVs is illusion of security they give their drivers. SUV drivers in general -- and especially young SUV drivers, of course -- tend to drive faster, pay less attention to their surroundings, and be less considerate of others on the road than any other class of drivers I've run into. I find it especially amusing (in my own morbid way) that SUV drivers have the gall to defend their choice of vehicle by saying it allows them to better see the road and other automobiles; as the driver of a small, economy car, I can tell you that a great many of them seem to pay no attention to other cars around them whatsoever.
Posted on August 17, 2004 2:40 PM
Gladwell makes that point, too, and only slightly more diplomatically.
Posted on August 17, 2004 4:05 PM
It's something to put under my kayak and mountain bike to get me to where I'm going kayaking and/or mountain biking with all the paddles, helmets, PFDs, etc. that kayaking and mountain biking entails. As a telecommuter, I don't feel too bad about the gas mileage since I get infinite miles/gallon commuting up the stairs to my home office. I get a chuckle out of articles like Gladwell's, that would seem to imply that all SUVs are city-block-sized. A Toyota RAV4 is not a Jeep Wrangler is not a Lincoln Navigator. A RAV4 will get 27MPG, but it's still an SUV. Face it, there are SUVs that are reasonable and SUVs that are unreasonable. Most people probably don't need a Chevy Suburban-sized vehicle, but they also probably don't need a car with the speed of a Corvette, either. And let's see ya try to put a two-person kayak on top of that 'vette...
Posted on August 17, 2004 9:34 PM
Ah, but that's the beauty of the 'Net, isn't it? I don't have to be diplomatic, and I can choose to read your references or not, yet base my argument entirely upon your data regardless... ;-)
All kidding aside: the mindset of middle America when it comes to choosing an automobile frustrates me to no end. We have, what, maybe a century's worth of petroleum left in the ground at current rates of use (being generous)? We've placed ourselves at the mercy of foreign producers for what percentage of our oil supply? How many of these folks were sentient in '73?
And that's not even broaching the subject of what our reliance on organic fuels is doing to the air we breath and the atmosphere that protects us. I'm stunned by the number of "granola folk" who are nuzzling the soles of their Birkenstocks against the pedals of Expeditions et al.
I really just want to hear one urban SUV owner who lives south of Michigan make a valid argument supporting their decision to buy one of these machines. For that matter, Michiganders: Buy a Subaru!
Posted on August 17, 2004 9:42 PM
I understand that an SUV has room for all sorts of gear, but isn't the point of the article that a minivan also has room for all the gear AND is a safer vehicle choice? It seems to me that the only thing an SUV has over a minivan is sex appeal.
I know I wouldn't be caught dead driving a minivan.
Posted on August 18, 2004 9:12 AM
I also did an article on SUV's, late last week, on my blog page. In my article, there are many links to many interesting sites. SUV saftey #'s, enviornmental issues, and some funny(or not so funny) stats. I give my opinion as well as round up some facts. One fact I did not put in the article is very interesting. In 1977, the government passed a bill to force the car companies to produce lower emmission vehicles. Shortly there after, the car companies started producing SUV's by; putting big truck bodies on pickup truck frames, changing the classification to light truck, and exploiting a loophole that the government has done nothing about. The main point in the article I wrote is, if you are going to get fringe benefits from owning an SUV, like the light truck classification, or not falling under EPA regulations, then maybe they should be considered commercial vehicles. Many use a tax write off for their SUV's, claiming to use them for business. They should be commercial vehicles and you should have to obtain a commercial truck license to drive them. That way people who can't handle a 9000 pound vehicle can't get behind the wheel of one. Hence, lives will be saved and everyone is happy. If you would like to check out my article it is at http://jovittore.blogspot.com .
Posted on August 18, 2004 2:30 PM
I'll tell you how I got over my reluctance to own a minivan once our kids started coming along: having hoisted other people's kids in and out of their parents' SUVs. Minivan = MUCH less back pain.
Posted on August 18, 2004 3:50 PM
I hear you. I don't consider minivans to be SUV's. It's the Expeditions, Hummers, Denalis and the such that is the problem. I have no problem with a 100 pound housewife needing to get her family around in a minivan. I do have a problem with that 100 pound housewife driving a 9000 pound truck which she has trouble driving and does her make-up while talking on her cell and watching a DVD. Accidents that are avoidable should be avoided. That's were my call for commercial driver licenses and commercial license plates comes in. It will seperate the people who can handle a vehicle that size from people who can not.
Posted on August 18, 2004 4:32 PM