So-called safety and consumer advocates have long preached that sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks are roadway menaces. Pity the fate of the driver of a lighter-weight, conventional vehicle unfortunate enough to tangle with one.
But two professors of economics at Rutgers University in the U.S.A. recently published a detailed study of light-truck and SUV accidents from 1994 to 1997. Douglas Coate and James Vander-Hoff found that the larger, heavier vehicles are safer for occupants in single-car crashes and multi-car accidents.
The overall point they make is simple, but often overlooked. While a collision between two light cars might kill everyone in both vehicles, passengers riding in a truck involved in a car-truck crash are more likely to survive thus, a net saving in lives.
Source: Brock Yates (Car and Driver magazine), SUVs Mean Safer Roads, Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2001.
For text (WSJ subscribers)
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve/text/wsjie/data/SB98642701798677 5024.htm
For more on Vehicle Safety http://www.ncpa.org/pd/regulat/reg-2.html
