Veiligheid van Sports Utility Vehicle's

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/weekinreview/02HAKI.html
In the Debate on S.U.V.'s, There's a New Casualty Count
By DANNY HAKIM
DETROIT -- What makes one automobile safer than another?

This used to be a simple question. Regulators looked at collision
data. If more people tended to die while riding in Vehicle X than in
Vehicle Y, then Vehicle Y was safer. In the 1970's, the government
added crash testing to study how cars did in different kinds of
collisions.

But now regulators and safety advocates are saying that another
factor should be taken into account: how much damage does Vehicle Y
inflict on Vehicle X when they collide? This "compatibility
question," as it is called, is at the heart of the debate over the
safety of sport utility vehicles, the American auto industry's most
profitable product.
[knip]
Her group presented data showing that 16.25 occupants of every
100,000 S.U.V.'s died in collisions annually, slightly higher than
the 15.7 occupants per 100,000 passenger cars. Though many drivers
bought S.U.V.'s believing they were much safer than cars because of
their size, their high risk of rollovers, a particularly lethal kind
of accident, more than offsets any advantage.

But critics say the true safety difference between S.U.V.'s and cars
is much greater, if one considers what S.U.V.'s do to other vehicles.
"It's really unethical to talk about the deaths only to the occupants
of these vehicles," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen,
a consumer group, at the Senate hearing. Ms. Claybrook was the top
safety regulator during the Carter administration, when crash testing
was begun. "You also have to look at deaths they cause to the
occupants of other vehicles," she said.

In fact, some S.U.V. critics contend the auto industry uses a "kill
or be killed" marketing strategy to sell these vehicles: if you don't
want to be killed by an S.U.V., you'd better buy one yourself.
[knip]
Still, it has drawn increasing scrutiny from regulators as the
nation's mix of vehicles has changed. Twenty years ago, a fifth of
sales went to light trucks (S.U.V.'s, minivans and pickups). Last
year, they accounted for 52 percent of sales.

The future of G.M., Ford and Chrysler now depends on S.U.V.'s and
pickups. The bigger models are exempted from many safety and
environmental regulations, and under the Bush administration's tax
plan, small-business owners could deduct their entire purchase price.

But whatever the corporate significance of large passenger vehicles,
their effect on fatality rates is also an ethical issue, said Dr.
Runge of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"The theory that I'm going to protect myself and my family even if it
costs other people's lives has been the operative incentive for the
design of these vehicles, and that's just wrong," he said in a
December interview. "Not to sound like a politician, but that's not
compassionate conservatism."

At last week's Senate hearing, he said that when an S.U.V. strikes a
car from the side, it is three times more likely to cause a fatality
than another car. Regulators believe this is mostly because of the
high ground clearance of S.U.V.'s, not their weight.

Such data is reshaping the way scientists evaluate vehicle safety.
Marc Ross, a University of Michigan physicist, and Tom Wenzel, a
researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published a
study last year that formulated a combined risk for different
vehicles, based on the deaths they inflicted both on their own
occupants and on others.
[knip]
"A shortcoming of many safety analyses has been that only risks to
drivers or occupants of a given kind of vehicle are evaluated," the
study says. "Risks imposed on others are ignored."
[knip]
But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the Commerce
Committee chairman, said, "What's the credibility of the auto
manufacturers when they clearly opposed seat belts and air bags?"

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