Are SUVs a health menace?

Clarence Ditlow Executive Director, Center for Auto Safety; Board Member, Consumers Union       YES In a collision between a sport utility vehicle and a passenger car, people in the car are four times more likely to be killed than people in the SUV. The SUV is higher than the car and its chassis far stiffer, so that in side impacts it rides over the car’s doorsill, penetrating the passenger compartment.   SUVs endanger their own occupants. Their height makes SUVs four times more likely to roll than cars. The rate of fatal rollovers is 1.5 per million registered vehicles for small SUVs, 0.8 for large SUVs, but only 0.3 for cars.   The frame stiffness makes crashes into solid objects more deadly.   Crash tests indicate a 25% likelihood of death or serious injury when the midsize Land Rover Discovery hits a solid wall, compared with an 8% to 15% likelihood in most intermediate- and large-size cars.   In tests in which SUVs, light trucks, and cars were crashed into the side of a Honda Accord, the test-dummy instruments indicated the worst injuries came from SUVs.   Though passengers in the Hondas would have survived, these tests belie real-world conditions. The SUV used was a Ford Explorer, which is low enough not to override the Accord’s sill, unlike the more popular SUVs. Also, the striking vehicles were precisely perpendicular to the Accords, an unrealistic condition that reduces danger by spreading the impact over the greatest area.   Injury data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demonstrate that collisions in which SUVs strike the sides of cars are far more deadly than when such collisions involve only cars.   SUVs will become a greater menace as they enter the used-car market. Used cars have higher accident rates than first-owner cars because the drivers tend to be younger and drink more alcohol.

Diane Steed President, Coalition for Vehicle Choice; former Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration       NO Recent media hype notwithstanding, the numbers don’t show a problem.   One is actually more likely to be killed crossing the street than dying in a collision with a light truck. In 1996, motor vehicles killed 5,412 pedestrians. During that time, 5,259 people were killed in collisions between cars and light trucks.   For occupant crash protection, bigger is better. Large SUVs are among the safest vehicles on the road. Eleven of the safest 20 vehicles, and 17 of the 25 safest, are light trucks (including minivans and pickups). Changing the design or weight of these vehicles might reduce safety for occupants.   Recently the NHTSA crashed a pickup, SUV, minivan, and full-sized family sedan into the side of a Honda Accord. In all of these impacts, the instrumented crash-test dummies indicated that all passengers would have survived, and most would have escaped serious injury. The SUV caused a slightly higher thoracic-injury reading, but it caused less pelvic injury than all other vehicles. This says clearly we are talking tradeoffs.   Moreover, the occupant-fatality rates are much higher for the small SUVs than the larger ones, because they roll over more. So we must be very careful about changing designs.   In the real-life crash-injury data that NHTSA has compiled, cars fare worse against light trucks.   One reason is that we are looking at crashes of relatively new sport utility vehicles into relatively older passenger cars. Cars produced after 1990 have about 40% more safety protection features than produced before then, including airbags and improved side-impact crash protection.   Improving vehicle compatibility in crashes is important, but we are not dealing with a national health menace.