Saturday, Jul 5, 2008
Insurance industry studies are showing that sports utility vehicles cause more deaths, injuries and damage in collisions with other cars. One solution: Raise their insurance rates.
Dec 8, 1997 | Americans, according to recent opinion polls, believe that global warming exists and would support measures to curb it, even if it means being hit in the pocketbook. One measure they could take -- and save money doing it -- would be to think twice before buying one of those sport utility vehicles that have sprung up across suburbs and cities like mushrooms. Only some 13 percent of SUVs are ever driven off-road. They're expensive, guzzle huge amounts of gas and emit a lot of pollution because many of them are classified as "light trucks," which are subject to easier emission standards.
They are also killing people in what are called "mismatch" car crashes. Some auto insurers are planning rate raises for SUVs because research suggests they inflict worse damage to smaller vehicles and their occupants in such crashes.
Salon talked with Kim Hazelbaker, senior vice president of the Highway Loss Data Institute. The insurance industry-funded institute, along with its sister organization, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, are conducting studies on "mismatch" car crashes this fall and winter.
What are "mismatch" crashes?
There are a couple of issues when you have large SUVs getting into crashes with smaller passenger cars. One is the obvious size mismatch. The average SUV is heavier than the average passenger car and physics being what it is, that's a bad thing for the passenger car in a multi-car collision.
The second mismatch is the bumper height. Most SUVs are four-wheel drive, which were designed originally for off-road use. They sit up higher than passenger cars, and many times when they get into crashes with passenger cars the bumpers do not meet. So you have a collision in which the SUV suffers little or no damage to its bumper, but that bumper's done a lot of damage to the metal panels of the vehicle that it hit.
Is this mismatch reflected in the injuries involved?
So far we've only done a limited investigation, into property damage losses. We don't at this point have hard data on the injury side, although one would unfortunately have to come to the conclusion that the likelihood of injuries is greater.
But there has been some comparative crash testing done in Europe.
Yes, and they show what you would expect -- that more physical damage is done to the smaller car and that dummies inside that car are more likely to sustain injuries. A German study crash-tested a Nissan SUV and a Volkswagen Golf nearly head-on. The crash test dummy in the Golf got head injuries measured at nearly 3,200, on a scale where 1,000 is fatal. A British study indicated that SUVs and pickups are especially dangerous when they hit an ordinary car side on.
Isn't it true that in the U.S., while mismatch crashes still are a minority of two-vehicle crashes, they now account for the majority of deaths in two-vehicle crashes?
Yes.
Many people buy SUVs because they look safer. But really it's safety at someone else's expense.
The data are pretty clear that SUVs do a good job of protecting their own from death and injury, and a pretty good job of not suffering much vehicle damage in collisions. The downside is, the other vehicle in the crash is not going to fare as well. The message on the safety side is: It's good for the occupants of the SUV but not good for the occupants of the other vehicle.
Apart from the height and weight mismatch, do people also tend to drive SUVs less carefully because they're driving such big vehicles?
The marketing data the car companies share with us shows that one of the aspects people really like about SUVs is the feeling of invulnerability. You sit up high -- that's always mentioned. You can see over other traffic. On the other hand, the message the driver gets is that he's going to be able to push everyone else out of the way. That's not a good thing.
Isn't there also the danger of rollovers with some SUVs?
Yes. The small SUVs are particularly troublesome. They're very popular with kids. Unfortunately, we as a society have a tendency to put our least experienced drivers in some of our more dangerous vehicles.
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