Thursday, August 19, 2004

It's No Too Late to Sell That Unsafe Gas Hog

"And still the safest way and most fuel efficient way for a family to drive around -- the very safe but exceptionally unsexy minivan. Hey, if you have to drive through the tundra or collect specimens of quickly diminishing plant, insect and animal species, I have no problem w/ SUVs. It was originally designed, marketed and sold as an OFF ROAD vehicle, for goodness sake. I sheepishly asked a new friend recently after sharing my not so subtle opinion on these ridiculous things if she drove one. She said, "No I DO NOT drive a SUV but I did accidentally rear end one the other day. That cracked me up." -Meg

Safety Gap Grows Wider Between S.U.V.'s and Cars
By DANNY HAKIM from the NEW YORK TIMES

Published: August 17, 2004


DETROIT, Aug. 16 - 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.

S.U.V.'s 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, S.U.V.'s accounted for 27.2 percent of all light-duty vehicle sales, up from 26 percent in the period a year earlier, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. However, sales growth for the largest sport utility vehicles has stalled lately, while small and medium-size S.U.V.'s, engineered more like cars than pickup trucks, continue to make rapid gains.

New figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shed light on how wide the differences in safety can be from one vehicle to another in the S.U.V. category, which now encompasses scores of models. For example, a few newer S.U.V. models appear to have a sharply lower risk of rolling over in an accident than other models.

Over all, 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 fewer people driving drunk and more people 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 S.U.V.'s and pickup trucks, which tend to pose greater hazards than cars both to their occupants and to others on the road.

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