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The chances of dying in a crash in a late-model vehicle have fallen by more than a third in three years, the latest IIHS calculations of driver death rates show. Among 2011 models, a record nine vehicles have driver death rates of zero. However, the gap between the safest and riskiest models remains wide, and three cars have death rates exceeding 100 per million registered vehicle years... ...The list of models with the lowest death rates illustrates just how much vehicles have improved. Eight years ago, there were no models with driver death rates of zero (see Status Report special...

Link only. Bigger, gas-guzzling cars are safer.

An armed woman in Denver chased two intruders from her home, only to have them drive off in her SUV.  From kdvr.com: About 2:30 a.m., two burglars broke into a woman’s home, then stole her blue Toyota Highlander, last seen going east on Exposition Avenue. She got in a gunfight with the intruders as they took the vehicle.  From cbslocal.com: The woman apparently got scared and fired at them while they were still outside. “Obviously she felt threatened so she took some measures,” said Sonny Jackson, Denver police spokesman. The suspects fired back, and one of the bullets ended...

The Chevrolet Niva, a mini-SUV produced as a joint venture between GM and Russian automaker AvtoVAZ, is a beige little ute based on a Lada. It's an incredibly boring car in current form, but the next generation Niva concept unveiled today ahead of the Moscow auto show is a strong enough idea to make us wonder why Chevy hasn't tried something like this over here. Even if you ditch the concept-y winch up front, knobbly tires, off-road snorkel and roof rack featuring enough lights to illuminate Norilsk, the new Niva still manages to look far more aggressive than the standard...

(Reuters) - General Motors Co is recalling certain Chevrolet Cruze models for possible axle fractures, and more than 490,000 trucks and SUVs for potential transmission cooler line issues, the company said in a statement late on Friday. These latest recalls come as the head of the country's biggest automaker, Chief Executive Mary Barra, faces Congress next week regarding who is to blame for faulty ignition switches linked to crashes and at least 12 deaths. The GM Cruze recall targets the 2013 and 2014 1.4L turbo gasoline powered model to replace a right front axle half shaft that can fracture without...

Mayor de Blasio’s SUV was caught on camera speeding through Queens and blowing through two stop signs Thursday — just two days after he announced a sweeping street-safety plan. The mayor — who was riding shotgun on the way back to City Hall from a pothole-filling photo op — was twice clocked going 15 mph over the speed limit by a WCBS/Channel 2 news crew. The two-car caravan also ran past two stop signs without even tapping the brakes and changed highway lanes without signaling, the CBS video shows. De Blasio’s wild ride came after his pledge to personally abide...

By now you have probably heard about the New York incident in which a businessman was dragged from his Range Rover and beaten by a mob of motorcyclists. The attack—which nicely combined elements of The Wild Angels and Bonfire of the Vanities—would have been media catnip regardless, but became a sensation when helmet-cam videos were posted on YouTube. The story just keeps producing spicy tidbits, notably the fact that a half-dozen undercover New York police officers were among the hundreds of rampaging cyclists. Now the New York Post has reported Reginald Chance, who was videotaped using his helmet to break...

CANBERRA, Australia, - An Australian man who heard scratching noises from beneath the hood of his sport-utility vehicle said he was shocked to discover a platypus hitching a ride. Cameron Blaseotto, 18, said female platypus apparently became wedged under the engine's air intake Wednesday when he drove through the flooded Murrumbidgee River in Canberra and he didn't discover the animal until he arrived at a friend's house about 10 miles away, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Monday. The platypus, dubbed Hilux, was turned over to the Australian Capital Territory Parks and Conservation Service, which returned her to the river. "I'd...

George Zimmerman, the man recently acquitted in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, helped rescue a family from an overturned SUV last week, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office confirmed today. According to sheriff's spokeswoman Heather Smith, deputies were called to the crash about 5:45 p.m. Wednesday. A Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle had gone off the road and rolled over in the area of Interstate 4 and State Road 46, Smith said, with two children and their parents inside. By the time a deputy arrived, Zimmerman and another man "had already helped assist the family by getting them out...

Any port in a storm... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD6wdrVFc0g

Authorities are investigating a gruesome discovery made south of the border just outside Ciudad Victoria on Easter Sunday. The Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office (PGJE) confirmed the bodies of nine men were found inside an SUV abandoned along the highway. Investigators reported the 2012 GMC Yukon was found at the Kilometer 7.5 marker of the Ciudad Victoria-Soto La Marina around 10 p.m. Easter Sunday. The SUV was found in a rural community named Ejido Santa Clara just outside Ciudad Victoria. The names of the nine slain men were not immediately available but PGJE officials said the majority of them had been...

Thieves plunder crashed SUV of tires, wheels and battery - while its dying driver lay trapped underneath A man who was crushed to death by his SUV after a fatal accident suffered the final indignity of being robbed as he lay trapped under the vehicle. Police in New Mexico say 26-year-old Steven Roy Reese of Carlsbad was killed either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning when he apparently lost control of his 1996 Ford Explorer on a little-used dirt road. However, when they got to the vehicle they discovered that somebody had stolen wheels, tires and the battery from the wrecked...

Whenever birds fly in front of moving vehicles, usually the bird is the one that loses. But a great horned owl can teach other birds a thing about surviving those situations. Sonji Coney-Williams was driving Feb. 7 on Florida's Turnpike through Yeehaw Junction when she saw something fly in front of her SUV and heard a smack, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. She continued driving for 150 miles to Plantation, not thinking about the incident, until the next day when someone told her she had a bird trapped in the grill of the sport utility vehicle....

An owl has been freed after it was found trapped behind the grille of a sport utility vehicle. When Sonji Coney Williams looked into the grille of her SUV, she noticed huge yellow eyes staring back at her. "I was about to faint," said Williams. She found an owl stuck inside. On Thursday, she was heading south on the Florida Turnpike. "I was driving about 60 miles per hour, and he never moved, and so I said, 'Oh, my God, I hit a bird,' and I felt so bad, but it was very dark," she said.... ...It was not until...

The mayor of Tampa, Bob Buckhorn, has traded in his GMC Yukon Denali, seized from a local pimp. What's Buckhorn's new ride? It's a brand-new Suburban, bought with money from the Republican National Convention. From pimps to pork, then. The old Denali was a 2005 model taken from infamous local pimp Melvin Fox, who was charged with sex trafficking, sexual battery, and allegedly forcing someone's daughter into prostitution. Buckhorn thought the SUV would be perfect for his kids, right after he took off the chrome spinners. Buckhorn gave the Denali back to the Tampa police department, and it is now...

This photograph is actually a video still captured from an Al Jazeera video of the remarkable scene at the U.S. Benghazi Consulate sometime before 11:30 pm, on 9/11/2012. Four additional captioned photos can be found at my Flickr page here: First photos of Americans abandoning Benghazi Consulate emerge . This is the first in a series of photos I will be posting over the weekend. I have added the video clip from the Benghazi compound which you can now watch here: First video of Americans abandoning Benghazi Consulate emerge I want to thank Congressman Issa for releasing the Benghazi compound...

Ultimate road rage.

Glenn Beck wrecked a rental at his daughter's wedding over the weekend. "So my rental car got totaled this weekend ... at my daughter's wedding," the outspoken talk-show host wrote on Twitter. On his radio show on Tuesday, Beck described the ordeal, saying after the ceremony he parked the rental SUV—a Ford Explorer—along a rain-soaked hill in the Finger Lakes area of New York, and forgot to put on the parking brake. Beck and his wife had already gotten out of the car when it began to slide, eventually flipping over, he said.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The man who hit nine people with a sport utility vehicle on the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill campus wrote a letter to a television reporter saying he read the Quran's 114 chapters 15 times and found that the Muslim holy book justified the attack. ''I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead,'' Mohammed Taheri-azar, 22, wrote in a letter to Amber Rupinta dated March 10 posted on WTVD's Web site. Police say that just before lunchtime March 3, Taheri-azar drove a rented 2006 Jeep Cherokee through the...

A car accident was the reason for a power outage in Springfield's Pine Point neighborhood this afternoon. Springfield Police Lieutenant John Bobianski told 22News an SUV crashed into a utility pole at Bay and Haskins Streets around 3:30. Power was knocked out in the surrounding neighborhood. 22News was there as WMECO crews worked to restore that power and clean up the downed wires. A passenger in that SUV was taken to Baystate Medical Center with a head injury. No charges were filed.