Saturday, June 4, 2005

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Corrected article: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that in a two-vehicle crash with a smaller car, the occupants of the SUV are more likely to be killed than are the people in the car.

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Blame drivers, not SUVs, for deadly accidents

People riding in cars are far more likely to be killed in single-vehicle crashes than in collisions with SUVs

By Warren Brown / The Washington Post

Related report Read the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's report Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

WASHINGTON--The story didn't make many front pages. Few corrections ever do, especially if they contradict media biases.

And ``media'' here refers to more than just the traditional lineup of newspapers and evening news programs, takes in more than magazines and newsletters. It includes television cop shows and situation comedies, radio and TV talk shows, and even sermons from the Sunday pulpit.

The truth, according to a report late last month by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, is that sport-utility vehicles are not the marauding, murderous vehicles that many in the media have portrayed them to be.

The IIHS report is based on a study of U.S. highway traffic fatalities during years 2002 and 2003 involving vehicles made from 1999 through 2002.

Seven percent of the people who were killed in those two-vehicle SUV-car crashes died in cars; but 10 percent of the fatalities occurred in the SUVs. One possible reason is that more people tend to ride in the bigger SUVs, thereby putting more of them at risk in a vehicle crash. Another possibility is that SUVs, with their higher centers of gravity, are more prone to tipping and rolling over in a destabilizing event, such as a crash.

Also, many people climbing into SUVs erroneously believe that the large size of their vehicles protects them and, thus, eliminates the need for wearing seat belts. That can be a fatal assumption, especially in a rollover crash, according to the IHHS. The institute does vehicle safety research and testing for the nation's largest auto insurers.

None of this is to suggest that people in subcompact Mini Coopers should go hunting for those in Hummers. Size does matter, and bigger generally has a better chance of winning that match. But SUV-car crashes are statistically few--again, accounting for 7 percent of the deaths in cars and 10 percent of those in SUVs.

Walls, trees, buildings, soft road shoulders and steep embankments are bigger threats, because most U.S. highway traffic fatalities result from single-vehicle crashes--accounting for 42 percent of the car deaths studied by the institute, and 63 percent of the fatalities in SUVs.

``The extra risks posed by the incompatibilities between cars and SUVs are real, but it's important to note that two-vehicle crashes with SUVs aren't the cause of most car occupant deaths,'' Brian O'Neill, IIHS president, said in the report. ``People riding in cars are far more likely to be killed in single-vehicle crashes than in collisions with SUVs.''

Still, government safety officials should press automotive manufacturers to make their trucks and SUVs more compatible with cars and smaller vehicles, and to make all vehicles in general more compatible with pedestrians, according to O'Neill and safety experts in the United States and abroad.

European countries, for example, are pushing car companies to redesign car hoods and engine bays to help reduce the risk of fatal injuries to pedestrians struck by automobiles.

``We need to do whatever we can to minimize the adverse consequences (of SUV-car crashes) for the car occupants; but we should keep this issue of crash incompatibility in perspective and avoid overstating the consequences,'' O'Neill said.

That's good advice; and in the interest of promoting an intelligent, productive discussion of vehicle and traffic safety, the media ought to follow it. They can start by writing more balanced headlines and placing the blame for traffic fatalities where it generally belongs--on the drivers.

Pedestrians, for example, aren't ``Killed by SUV'' any more than they are killed by a car, bus, minivan or pickup truck. Deaths in such instances most often are caused by human error. It's time to start putting the responsibility where it belongs.