Crash test dummies: Insurance lobby want us all in SUVs

December 23, 2006

Guest Post by Morbo

More people are buying small cars because the price of gas has escalated. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of these cars have been labeled unsafe because so many other people insist on driving around in the tanks known as sport utility vehicles.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently put eight small cars through a series of impact tests. All of the cars passed the head-on tests, but only one, the Nissan Versa, did well on the side- and rear-crash tests too. The New York Times noted:

The results, which are being released Tuesday, show that some small cars offer significantly better protection than others, but experts caution that even the safest subcompact car cannot overcome its inherent size and weight disadvantage. On average, subcompacts weigh about 800 pounds less than midsize cars like the Toyota Camry and 4,000 pounds less than midsize S.U.V.’s like the Ford Explorer.

Adrian Lund, the institute’s president, said, “A good-scoring small and lightweight car is not nearly as good as a good-scoring midsize car — that’s just the law of physics. If you’re really shopping for safety, then this probably isn’t your best choice.”

Note how it’s all the fault of those who choose small cars. I agree that we can’t repeal the laws of physics. However, it is possible to build a small car that protects its driver in the event of a crash with another small car. But no small car, no matter how well built, can come out on top after a high-impact crash with an SUV.

Yet to the Insurance Institute, it’s the driver of the small car who should make a different choice.

I can see why it would say that. This is an industry group with an agenda, after all. The Institute would rather everyone drive a tank because when two tanks collide, the damage is likely to be less than a tank hitting a Toyota Yaris. Ergo, insurance companies pay less in claims.

But at a time when global warming, due in part to tailpipe emissions, threatens our very survival, and the price of gas hits record highs (at least in the summer), perhaps encouraging everyone to drive a tank that gets 14 miles to the gallon isn’t the way to go. We can even the playing field and help the planet by encouraging the trend toward small cars.

There are things we can do to make small cars safer. Side airbags are an example. They are an option on many small cars right now. They need to be mandatory.

On its website, the Insurance Institute claims to be “an independent, nonprofit, scientific and educational organization dedicated to reducing the losses — deaths, injuries, and property damage — from crashes on the nation’s highways.” In fact, it is a front group for the auto insurance lobby. It is also, I would submit, blind to the fact that the best thing we can do to improve highway safety is pursue policies that discourage people from driving behemoths.

Pedestrians and bicyclists can get screwed I guess?

Many moons ago, when SUVs first became popular my dad (who spent almost two decades in Germany, land of the car fanatic) had a great solution to the destructive power of the SUV: Require all SUV drivers to go through extensive training so they can better control their four-wheeled beasts. Let’s face it, there is a lot more than physics involved in many car accidents. Psychology plays a major role. Or at least stupidity. If the II is really interested in auto safety it should look at information on real car accidents. They’d probably discover a need to lobby for a federal ban on cell phone use while driving.

  • Detroit staked its future on Americans making the choice for safer vehicles. Advocates of higher federal gas mileage standards faced an uphill battle against Congressmen making Detroit’s argument for greater safety vs. lighter vehicles (the old lie that Detroit was not manufacturing demand for SUVs).

    In spite of the higher gas prices, sales of trucks and SUVs have not dropped as much as we might have predicted. They dropped some, but people are still buying the shit out of them. But, wait, Detroit has made more of them flex fuel. What a crock (aided and abetted by our corn state politicos including Oberamma the Magician)!

    But, to get serious, it is a tragic fate for anyone who had the collective interests of future generations in mind when he purchased a small fuel efficient vehicle, to get killed in a collision with an SUV or big 4 wheel drive pickup. It is a tragedy no matter what the incentive for anyone who drives a small vehicle and gets killed or injured by the driver of maladaptive technology. But, in the end, we will all get hammered by our seduction with the machine.

  • Just the other day I narrowly missed being killed by that most dangerous phenomenon on the streets of Los Angeles: a small woman barely in control of a large SUV while yakking on her cellphone, after she decided 40 seconds after missing her left turn arrow to make her left turn anyway, while I was in the pedestrian crosswalk – had I not been able to jump backwards 4 feet, I’d be dead.

    Other than making Yakking While Driving a $1,000 fine and a moving violation with 12 points (enough to lose your license for 6 months in California) to whack the morons over the head hard enough they know the law is there (the current “new law” will make it a $25 “infraction” – BFD), I would love to see SUVs taxed out of existence. I enjoy laughing at the suburban idiots at the gas station as they decide whether to fill the tank or put food on the table.

    SUVs: I once thought of buying one, but I couldn’t pass the IQ test low enough to qualify.

    The one good thing is it is starting to be socially uncool to be an SUV driver. Even here in Idiot Central, aka Los Angeles.

  • SUVs are not safer. They roll over far more often than any other vehicle due to their higher center of gravity. There are numbers of other tests other than from the “Insurance” Industry (we insure you give us your money, after that you’re on your own)that demonstrate that putting a moron in charge of a tank is dangerous to everyone, including the moron.

    Ever notice how many Republicans drive SUVs?

  • I personally call suburban SUVs, Idiot Boxes cause you got to be an idiot to get one. Also, I use it as an indicator the owner’s of major league insecurities (physical or mental) as well as lacking in foresight.

    I grew up in farm country where pickups and 4X4 SUVs are a necessity, but I’ve yet to accept why suburban/urban folks need SUVs. To me, a pickup or SUV that is sparkly clean and not banged up is a waste. A couple of years ago, one of my friends skidded into a ditch and tried to convince an aquaintence to pull him out of the ditch with his pickup, but the aquaintence refused. Why? Because he didn’t want to get his pwecious truck dirty.

    WTF?!?

  • Sorry, but you’re wrong here.

    As long as we continue to act as if all cars are equal, nothing will ever be done about SUVs. And distorting the safety reports to further our political agenda is shameful.

    A couple years ago my compact was rear-ended by a minivan. It was barely scratched, my car took about $4,000 damage. My little girl was in a carseat in the back. What do you think would have happened if we’d been rear-ended by an SUV? Or one of those horrible trucks with the monster tires?

    As long as we continue to distort safety reports to make it seem as if small cars are just as safe as big cars, nothing will be done. And families that try to be responsible and trustingly pick small cars will be betrayed by our refusal to give them accurate information.

  • Sorry Morbo, you are barking up the wrong tree. The insurance institute does safety tests. Bottom line, physics rears its ugly head. The car companies also could do a better job with side impact technology (notice the difference between vendors in the actual report), but the institute noted that mass is your friend in terms of survivability.

    Why play right wing talking head – because the insurance institute, who is financially motivated to minimize injury based payouts, noted honest scientific results? If you want to change the equation, lobby congress and the White House. Leave the attacking honest science to the batshit stupid crowd.

    -jjf

  • When recently picketing against the Iraq war, I observed first hand that the bigger and more expensive the SUV was .. the more than likely the driver had an extended middle finger and facial expression indicitative of indigestion.. ( which proves perhaps that money doesn’t buy happiness)

    but I hate to think of those assholes with all that inertia.

  • Tom Cleaver,

    You are so right! Moms in gigantomobiles yakking on the phone are NOT a phenomenon restricted to Ellay. Here in li’l ol’ Raleigh, NC, they are absolutely everywhere, and they scare the stuffing out of me. I, too, have had to leap out of the way, just as you described, TWICE last summer as I was quite legally crossing, with the light, in the crosswalk. Sometimes it seems as though people think, “We have a kid that weighs 40 pounds! We must have a car the size of a 767 or it’s child abuse!” I’m so tired of fighting them, of being almost run off the road because they drift into other lanes at the slightest curve. I also enthusiastically agree that special training should be required for those who insist on these juggernauts. Sorry for the length and the ranting nature of this post, but wow, this has touched a nerve with me.

    Merry Christmas to all!

  • A progressive tax – more hp, more weight = more taxes – would certainly help the ratio of big to small. And the insurance companies, if they are smart, will also factor in the “pigheadedness” of SUV drivers who cause accidents. If large vehicles cause greater damage to smaller vehicles, shouldn’t the cost of the repairs a vehicle will CAUSE be as large a factor as the chost of repairs SUSTAINED? Making money, I’ve found, is a better corporate incentive than being environmentally conscious.

  • When the battle was raging about how we just HAD to drill in Anwar, I often wondered how little the CAFE standards would have to be raised in order to save the same amount of oil we could expect to get from Anwar. This is off point, but illustrates that the behemoths on the road raise the cost of gasoline for us all.

    It may be a matter of physics that SUVs are more of a danger to small cars than the reverse, but the small cars (and their drivers) can more than offset the SUVs’ natural advantage through alertness, agility, and intelligence. I routinely drive my car (a Miata) with at least one thumb on a horn button.

  • Have we learned no lessons from Iraq? When your vehicle has problems with IEDs(Impractical Enormous Drivers), just up-armor your rig. Small vehicles aren’t unsafe, they just need better countermeasures.

  • Unfortunately, if you up-armor smaller cars to make them safer, you also make them heavier and increase their fuel consumption. A problem aerospace engineers have wrestled with for decades when designing combat planes.

  • If anything good has come from the Iraq War, it is this: The civilian version of the “Hummer,” in all its many guises, is highly susceptible to destruction via impact with an explosive device—because its militarized cousin is equally susceptible to the aforementioned destruction.

    So go out and buy that smallish, fuel-economizing vehicle! Just remember that you need a very special option: A big yellow sign in the back window that says “Caution. Improvised Explosive Device on board. Hit me with your SUV—and die a really ugly death….”

  • SUV should be treated as the overweight trucks that they really are. Many roads in residential areas as well as many highways has signs dictating tonage ceilings, and that trucks that are heavier must use alternate routes. Many SUV breaks this limit, and should be heavily fined and banned from areas where the road is not rated for that weight. These SUVs are literally destroying the roads they are driving on.

    So I say, ban them all….

  • I was in car number 4 in a 9 car pile-up on an icy country road in Ohio in a Honda Civic. I survived and the car was repaired. The only car cited for liability was the SUV that squashed the car in front of it (cars number 3 and 2.) Car number 2 (the SUV) was sued. The same unfortunate Honda Civic was involved in a different traffic accident 5 years later(with a train) , and once again everyone in the Honda Civic survived and the car itself was repaired and driving within three weeks. I see flipped over SUVs every morning on my way to work. Quit telling these idiots that they are safer than the rest of us just because their cars take off faster in snow. It’s how they land or stop that matters.

  • Just remember that you need a very special option

    Or we could just bring back the Pinto. ;-p
    How about a rocket launcher mounted on the hood? I know that would screw up the aerodynamics but talk about driver satisfaction…

    Quit telling these idiots that they are safer than the rest of us just because their cars take off faster in snow.

    Yes, they take off fast, all the better to fishtail all over the damn place. The last time DC got major snow fall, I was in an antediluvian Tercel held together by Bondo and rust. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun it was to sedately roll past at least a dozen people trying to extract their super-safe, drive-anywhere behemoth hunks of metal from the sides of the road.

    Did we point and laugh?

    Mmmaybe.

  • I heard this story second-hand, but I really hope it’s true:

    Guy takes a day off of work to pick up his new hummer. Once he gets it, he drives over to the office, parks in front, runs inside and invites everyone to come out and admire his new vehicle. Out on the sidewalk, while everyone is dutifully oohing and ahhing, one of his female coworkers says, “Wow, sorry about your penis!”

  • In April of 2005, my son’s best friend and his fiancee were killed by a stoned twenty-year old woman driving a ginormous Ford Excursion. My son’s friend was making a left turn off of Highway 101 in Oregon and the woman, without a pause to wonder why the five or six cars in front of her had slowed down, pulled out and passed them all at seventy miles per hour. She broadsided our friend’s car (a small, two-door sedan) and killed them both instantly, while she walked away without a scratch. You can imagine how pissed I was when I heard from a friend that the brain-dead redheads over on Free Republic were discussing the accident as though it was our friend’s fault, saying in effect that it isn’t the SUV’s that are dangerous, but that people driving little cars should just stay the hell out of the way! That kind of mindset is what’s wrong with these asshats – they think “might makes right”.
    We’d all be safer – not to mention greener – if everyone drove little cars. I heard from the State Patrol who investigated the accident that our two friends might have survived if they’d been hit by a car the same size as theirs. But as one of the posters above commented, nobody’s safe from a tank.

  • I’m surprised. The comments on this thread are the tone I would expect to find at Free Republic. Did any of you ever consider that there might be other reasons to drive an SUV than ego or bad taste?

    I’m over two meters tall. I picked a Honda CR-V for its room — it’s the first car I’ve ever owned in which my head doesn’t brush the roof *and* my knees aren’t pressed against the dash, even if I don’t recline the seat.

    A friend of mine has an SUV because she’s about four feet 9 and can’t see other traffic clearly unless the car is taller.

    They make great company cars for services which carry cargo or tools/equipment that they don’t want to have out in the open bed of a pickup truck (think caterers, electricians, plumbers…)

    I will certainly grant you that most people drive SUV’s for the wrong reasons. But let’s not get racist here, OK?

  • Catherine & Fitz, there is a great deal more to motoring safety than the size of one’s vehicle. And there’s not as much safety associated with SUVs as you think (or as the Insurance Institute claims).

    Deails here.

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