Book I'd like to find

[m_cobweb]

baphometsangel, take note! ;-)

High and Mighty: SUVs--The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way, by Keith Bradsher.

The New Republic ran a lengthy review of this book last week that included a lot of the facts therein. Such as, how the auto industry got around a lot of mileage and pollution requirements by making SUVs higher and heavier until they qualified as "light trucks" (although they could meet those requirements easily if they wanted to spend the money to do so). And how studies repeatedly show that rollover risks are much higher than for other vehicles, yet SUVs still have a false reputation for being safe. And how perfectly nice people (as well as aggressive drivers who want to appear intimidating on the road) are buying SUVs without being aware of the facts behind their manufacture and marketing.

Comments

[sarmonster.livejournal.com]

*snort* There's probably a few books out on how smoking is bad for you, too. Any on the danger of Motorcycles? Haha.
I rolled my last jeep: Hit black ice, went off the road, hit a hillside -almost ended up in the river. We had to crawl out the back window & walked away with no injuries. Maybe wouldn't have rolled in a car, but maybe would've ended up in the river. If we HAD been in a car & rolled, I can assure you the situation would've been a lot worse.
Got creamed by a guy running a red at an intersection, cherokee took bumber damage, his front end was toast. Had we been in a car it would've been totalled.
You HIT an SUV in a car, yeah, car loses.

If you know anything about me, safety is not one of my major concerns, I drive the Jeep for clearence, I take it off road, I've high-centered it in the snow (wee!). A car doesn't carry multiple kayaks too well.
How often has a Geo driver heard "lets take your car?" Hmmf.

[m-cobweb.livejournal.com]

Aha! You actually *use* yours off-road. A lot of this guy's complaint was suburban drivers whose vehicles never leave the city. I don't think he objects to people who use them for the purpose for which they were intended. It's the leather-upholstered Expeditions that could be made safer and more fuel-efficient that he's ranting about.

(Then again, my first car was totalled by a Silverado after I'd had it a month. So I might conceivably have an axe to grind. ;-))

[rwx.livejournal.com]

The jeeps have one part of the rollover risk mentioned in the book, but they don't generally suffer from the second. The first risk is, of course, the increased risk of rollover.

The second risk is that the larger SUVs (and some of the smaller ones) can't support their own weight after they've rolled over, so the weight of the vehicle collapses the passenger compartment, killing/gravely injuring everyone inside. This collapse is apparently much worse than the similar collapse for non light trucks -- if you'd been driving a ford excursion, you'd have a lesser chance of walking away from that rollover.

[vulture23.livejournal.com]

"How often has a Geo driver heard "lets take your car?" Hmmf."

This could be seen as a good reason to buy a Geo -- fewer people trying to hit you up for rides! ;)

Seriously, though, while the common perception is that SUVs are safer, statistics don't bear that out. Despite your personal experiences, accident statistics show that there are just as many fatalities in SUVs as there are in cars -- and SUVs are a lot more likely to injure other people. (And while I wasn't there so of course don't know the whole situation, I'm not so convinced that a car would've ended up in the river where your jeep didn't. Less mass == less inertia == shorter stopping distance.)

Now, if you're using yours off-road, then you've got a good reason. The extra clearance serves a purpose, and (as <lj user="rwx" points out) a jeep is a much more practical vehicle than, say, an Expedition. Similarly, when I was a kid in the 70s, my family drove a Suburban -- but then, it was a family of seven, so most cars just didn't have enough room. The SUV problem is the people who drive a mega-SUV to work and back by themselves, or who have a kid and think that the SUV will be safer (it's not). For those people, the only reason to drive an SUV is ego -- they'd be just as well served by a station wagon. Personally, I feel a lot more comfortable driving a smaller vehicle with more responsive handling anyhow. And in addition, I spend half as much on gas and have a much easier time finding parking.

[vulture23.livejournal.com]

Pooh. Damned HTML screwups. And I can't edit it. Oh well.

[sarmonster.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yeah, OK, soccer Moms in Expeditions piss me off. 2WD SUVs piss me off. Lowered SUVs REALLY piss me off. No one's really come out with a minivan a CEO would want to be seen in-don't say PT cruiser: they're crap, Boss has one.

Suburbans...If I lived in AK, maybe. The gas mileage is half that of my Cherokee.

I think you'll be seeing a lot less of the monster bubbles: Higher gas prices, SUV's "Going out of style" (station wagons are coming back?!) and I'd imagine within the next five years we'll see gas use regulation requirements as we do with smaller cars-Actually the reason so many Auto makers are building SUVs-they don't have a gas mileage requirement whereas newer cars do.

[baphometsangel.livejournal.com]

BWHAHAHAHAHA

See? I know what the fuck i'm talkin about.