Why SUVs are bad for you

This review, "Bumper Mentality" of a new book called "High and Mighty" (nothing to do with Uriah Heep) paints a very dim picture of SUVs and their drivers.

Ask a typical SUV driver why he drives such a formidable vehicle, and he'll invariably insist that it's for safety reasons--the kids, you know--not because he's too vain to get behind the wheel of a sissy Ford Windstar. Automakers themselves know otherwise--their own market research tells them so. But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing--a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.

The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars--8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed.

Sounds like the "SUVs are safer" meme spread by the car industry's advertising is a Big Lie worthy of Joseph Goebbels. And as for anything else:

While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.

While this article focuses on America, we have a plague of the things here in Britain too, sadly not even European levels of fuel taxes are a deterrent.

(Link from Boing Boing)

Update: Michele is not impressed. Not that I thought she would be.