We MUST declare war on automobiles!

Marlin, I didn't miss the point, but you seem to be.
SUV/passenger car fatalaties is not a zero sum game. More SUV's on the road *increases* the total fatalaties, because it makes the passenger cars quite a bit less safe, while affording minimal benefit to the SUV owner.

Yeah, I'd call that stupid. Or worse.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Aug 24 2006, 06:06 PM) [snapback]308791[/snapback]</div>

I definetely agree with that. incidences per distance travelled are much more meaningful than per registered car, for obvious reasons.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marlin @ Aug 24 2006, 06:06 PM) [snapback]308791[/snapback]</div>

Ah, but be careful with conclusions. Be awere that you lump together a lot of different kinds of vehicles in these statistics, with a huge price range. SUV's tend to be rather upscale in price, whereas the car category contains a lot of econo-boxes. If you want to compare passenger car safety with SUV safety, you need to look at vehicles with equal price. Personally, I'm convinced that, if you have a certain budget, the safest car you can get for that budget is a passenger car. In SUV's you spend a lot of money on stupid steel, whereas, with the same budget, you can invest more in active safety in a passenger car. Such a dynamic stability control, the most important safety innovation since ABS.

Also, it's misleading to judge the safety of an SUV vs a passenger car by looking at SUV-car accidents only. These are only one portion of accidents that happen on the road. How do SUV's compare to cars when it comes to single-car accedents (e.g. losing control in a turn)? Could it be that SUV's are more prone to that kind of accidents?

You can also think of it this way: what do you think would be the safest situation, if all people on the road drive passenger cars, or if all people drive SUV's ?

Besides the Prius, I drive a Volvo XC70 (not an SUV!). I believe that this car is safer than any SUV that exists on the market. Why? Because it is so much quicker to react than a big SUV. If you are in risk of crashing with a big 18-wheeler, no amount of SUV steel is going to protect you. Your only chance is to avoid that accident. A nimble car gives you a clear advantage here. That's why I believe that a big passenger car that is fast and quick to handle, and stuffed with all the modern safety features is safer than just any SUV. You are well protected during an accident, and much better placed to avoid an accident.

 

I would really like to see some results on modern passenger cars. Side airbags were practically non-existant in 1999. Also, the study doesn't indicate what years of vehicles were involved, so the cars may have been even older than the years of the study.

It also only describes head-on collisions, ignoring offset collisions, angled collisions, side-impact collisions, and one-vehicle accidents. It may be true that SUV's, when lined up exactly with a small car, are safer. But if you deviate from center, change the angle of approach a few degrees, then what? Over she goes.

Nate

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Aug 24 2006, 12:08 PM) [snapback]308844[/snapback]</div>

Wow, must be nice to have this view of our country! So easy to forget that all of Europe was fighting for years while America was fiddling around with isolationist ideas that the rest of the world didn't matter, including German hostilities and cries for help that we ignored. Russia pushed back the Germans from well inside their border back across Poland and into Germany by the time we finally put Americans on the front line. If it weren't for working with Britain and even France, the U.S. wouldn't have had a presence at all inside Germany. In the end, everybody had to sacrifice in the fight against Hitler's regime, including your "liberal spineless people" who had their cities bombed around them, suffered food and other shortages, yet still fought the Germans. I'm not putting down the American effort and our brave soldiers were prepared to die for the cause and all too often did. But America is not this white knight saving the helpless damsel from the big bad dragon.

And we fought Germany and Japan because of their aggresion and crimes against humanity. Not as in Iraq where they might have weapons they might use against us, even though other hostile countries are known to have those same weapons, or other countries contributed more to 9/11 (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc).