I have always been bothered by the notion that driving an SUV makes sense because it is safer. That sounds like an obfuscated way of saying, “My kid’s safety is more important than your kid’s safety so I’ll get a bigger car than you have.” The old arms race with the USSR worked so well that we have imported it to our streets.
I assumed, like pretty much everyone else, that the SUVs really were safer because of their size. Imagine my surprise when I read Study shows children no safer in SUVs than cars-Findings dispel myth that has helped fuel the growing popularity of SUVs among families on the Detroit News’ web site.
The study… was sponsored by Partners for Child Passenger Safety, a research project of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and… State Farm Insurance Co.
The researchers looked at accidents involving nearly 4,000 children under age 16 between 2000 and 2003, and found child injury rates of about 1.7 percent in both cars and SUVs….
The study found that the extra weight of SUVs enhanced safety, reducing the risk of injury by more than a third.
But that was offset by findings that SUVs were more than twice as likely as cars to roll over in crashes.
Children in rollovers were three times more likely to be seriously injured than those in non-rollover accidents, according to the study.
The findings surprised researchers, who assumed heavier SUVs were safer than cars when they launched the study a year ago, Durbin said.
It sounds like, if you want to keep your children safe, tried-and-true methods like these still work best:
- Drive defensively
- Buckle up, even in the back seat
- Use car seats for the little ones
- Turn your headlights on, even during the day
There is a “hidden” but huge advantage to these methods over buying an SUV; they all cost nothing. You can use all of them with your existing car.
