Car and Driver Challenges Claim That SUVs Kill

    ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 12 Does choosing a sport utility
vehicle (SUV) unreasonably put occupants of smaller cars at risk?  Car and
Driver Editor at Large Patrick Bedard says, "No."

    While New York Times' ethics columnist Randy Cohen claims in the July 5,
2000 issue of the Los Angeles Times that purchasing an SUV means "buying your
safety at the expense of another's," and Los Angeles Times writer Mary Rourke
puts SUVs on the "social responsibility scale somewhere between tobacco and
semiautomatic weapons," Bedard disagrees.  He says "the unethical car is the
one that poses high risks to its occupants."

    Citing the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Bedard builds a
strong case for SUVs.  "The high risks for occupants in light (and small) cars
have more to do with the vulnerability of their own vehicles than with the
aggressivity of other vehicles.  Occupants of light cars are far more likely
to be killed in single-vehicle crashes or in collisions with other cars than
they are in crashes with utility vehicles and pickups combined," says the
IIHS.

    Further, collisions between cars account for a minority of highway
deaths.  Bedard says that in 1998 (latest figures available), single-vehicle
fatal crashes outnumber multi-vehicle fatal crashes by a wide margin, 20,897
to 16,184.  In fact, about 20 percent of "highway fatalities" do not occur in
vehicles -- they're pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists, according to
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

    "The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to travel in passenger
vehicles that offer good crashworthiness to their occupants," says IIHS Senior
Vice-President Adrian Lund.

    That puts SUVs above all others, Bedard concludes, adding that the New
York Times' claim, "hit someone and you'll kill them" (in an SUV) simply isn't
true.  He says, "If the Times really cares about the morality of vehicles, I
would bring SUVs to the dock on a different charge:  Is it ethical to block
the sightlines of everyone not driving a truck?"