Posted on 07/17/2003 4:21:34 PM PDT by demlosers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people killed in sport utility rollover crashes rose 14 percent last year as total highway deaths hit a 12-year high at nearly 43,000, the U.S. government reported on Thursday.
The Transportation Department's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also reported that car crash injuries fell to an all-time low in 2002.
Child and pedestrian deaths also went down as did fatalities involving large trucks.
But in 2002, SUV rollover fatalities jumped to more than 2,400 victims, an increase of 14 percent over last year, the government said. Sixty-one percent of all SUV fatalities involved rollovers.
Overall fatalities increased to 42,815 in 2002 from 42,196 in 2001. Rollovers involving all types of vehicles accounted for more than 80 percent of the increase.
Government figures show the rate of fatal rollovers for SUVs is almost three times that of cars.
These statistics help underscore the challenge facing regulators, who have redoubled efforts to reduce carnage on the nation's roads. Motorists traveled more than 2.8 trillion miles last year.
This summer, highway safety officials launched media and law enforcement initiatives to improve seat belt use and discourage drunk driving.
Alcohol-related fatalities remained unchanged at 41 percent of the total, or 17,419. And nearly 60 percent of the total number of people killed in auto crashes last year were not wearing seat belts.
"I personally urge states to pass tough laws prohibiting drunk driving and requiring the use of safety belts. Once and for all we must resolve the national epidemic on our highways," Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said in a statement.
The nation's top auto safety regulator, Jeffrey Runge, has launched a high-profile campaign to make popular sport utility vehicles safer.
For now, Runge is relying on an industry-government effort to reduce SUV rollover and other risks, but has not ruled out regulations to force changes.
There are 22 million SUVs on U.S. roads, or about 10 percent of the total number of vehicles. This explosion in popularity since the mid 1990s has raised concerns about larger and heavier SUVs sharing the road with passenger cars.
In fatal crashes between passenger cars and the vehicle category that includes SUVs, the occupants of the car were more often the victims.
Joan Claybrook, president of consumer group Public Citizen, said the increase in SUV rollover death figures could put new pressure on the industry to make those vehicles safer. But she doubted voluntary efforts would succeed, saying that regulation would probably be necessary.
"You can design a vehicle to prevent most of the injuries and deaths," said Claybrook, who held Runge's job in the late 1970s.
The problem isn't the SUV, it's the people driving them. They look like and are marketed as a big station wagon, people buy them and viola! They don't handle like a station wagon. In fact, they aren't a station wagon at all.
They are a really short, and in some cases narrow, truck with a high CG and they are extremely sensitive to pilot error. You just can't expect a SUV that sits a foot and a half off the ground to handle like mom's ford tarus.
And if you do, you're going to pay for it.
Most people don't even know how to properly operate front wheel drive vehicles, let alone a mammoth SUV. It's no wonder they are getting killed.
Sure would be a good time to be in the car helmet business. A whole new area of specialty would be created overnight for unemployed sno-board designers, too. Full-face snow machine or dirt bike style? Touring bike or full racing aeroshell? Make mine neon-free, please skip the hands-free cell.
LOL! LOL!
While traffic deaths per mile have indeed declined, the decline is dramatically less than occurred in other countries. If our safety policy had not been so influenced by the agenda of Ralph Nader and his protégé Joan Claybrook, about 200,000 fewer Americans would have been killed in traffic in the last two decades. Our whole focus accepts crashes as inevitable, and sources of litigation wealth. The only really effective way to reduce death in traffic is to reduce the number of crashes -- a simple truism widely accepted outside our litigious society. This is documented in detail in my new book "TRAFFIC SAFETY" (ISBN 0975487108 published August 2004) described at
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/traffic-safety.htm
The site has the complete text - note particularly “The Dramatic Failure of US Safety Policy” at
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/ts/text/ch15.htm
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