SUVs popular, but safety a nagging conce
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| Tue, 08-17-2004 - 11:29am |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/186592_suv17.html
SUVs popular, but safety a nagging concern
Crash fatalities are down, but data still point to rollover risk
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
By DANNY HAKIM
THE NEW YORK TIMES
DETROIT -- 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.
SUVs continue to gain in popularity, despite safety concerns and the vehicles' lagging fuel economy at a time when gasoline prices are high. For the first seven months of 2004, SUVs accounted for 27.2 percent of all light-duty vehicle sales, up from 26 percent for the comparable period in 2003, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. However, sales growth for the largest sport utility vehicles has stalled lately, while small and medium-sized SUVs, engineered more like cars than pickup trucks, continue to make rapid gains.
Overall, crash fatalities declined across the board in 2003 to the lowest levels in six years, the government figures show, with 42,643 people killed in traffic accidents in the United States. Much of the decline appeared to come from the fact that fewer people were driving drunkenly and more were buckling up.
But the United States has not made as much progress as some other developed nations, because rates of seat-belt use remain lower here and because of the growing numbers of SUVs and pickup trucks, which tend to pose greater hazards than cars both to their own occupants and to others on the road.
The main reason for the safety gap in SUV and car fatalities, according to federal regulators, is that SUVs are more likely to roll over, a symptom of their higher ground clearance.
Industry groups have insisted for years that SUVs are at least as safe as passenger cars. Ron Defore, a spokesman for a lobbying group, Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America, cited statistics from the insurance industry, which found last year that fatality rates for newer sport utility vehicles were markedly better than those of older models.
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The problem with SUVs is that many people who buy them somehow don't grasp that a heavy vehicle built on a truck-type chassis that rides higher off the ground simply isn't constructed for high-speed driving and aggressive cornering. Even though there are mandatory warning labels pasted on the sun visor and additional cautions laid out in the owner's manual, many people still think that it's OK to drive an SUV just like a car -- and expect it to behave like one."<
Quote from...........
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/9412526.htm?1c
>"The hugely popular vehicles - there were 20 million of them in the United States in 2002, one in every six new vehicles - are high-profile and heavy. They emit up to 5.5 times as much air pollution per mile as cars and get far fewer miles per gallon of fuel.
The United States has 5 percent of the world's population but produces nearly a third of the ozone-destroying greenhouse gases from vehicles driven on highways. Large sport utility vehicles can burn 57 percent more gas per mile and so produce 57 percent more carbon dioxide than full-sized cars."<
Quote from..............
http://www.thereporter.com/Stories/0,1413,295~30191~2338189,00.html
btw: 6 miles of it on a rough dirt road:(
Sounds as though you really need an SUV. I have a small utility vehicle with AWD, it gets pretty good mileage, mid 20's MPG. I really feel safe driving on the roads
Too many drive SUVs just for the appearance not out of necessity. Who needs a Hummvee(s?) in S.Calif.? ;)
Very, very true!!