Are SUVs "supremely unsafe vehicles"? Analysis of rollovers and injuries with sport utility vehicles

With increasing speed limits and more light trucks penetrating the market, concern over their rollover risk is growing. In particular, the general public and automobile manufacturers would like to know if the increasingly popular sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are indeed safer than other vehicle platforms. The influences of various vehicle platforms on rollovers and driver injuries were investigated. Specifically, (a) the rollover intensities of SUVs vis-h-vis those of other vehicle types in single-vehicle crashes and (b) the severity of the resulting driver injury were explored. Data from a good-quality federally maintained database were used for crash analysis. The database contains a relatively clean stratified sample of police-reported tow-away crashes nationwide, and it contains detailed information about vehicle rollovers. Rollover intensity, captured by the number of quarter turns, was investigated by using weighted negative binomial models; injury severity, measured on the abbreviated injury scale, was examined by using weighted ordered logit models. New insights emerged about the factors that increase rollover intensity and injury severity. As expected, SUVs are more likely to roll over and therefore injure their occupant drivers more severely. However, SUVs also protect their drivers during collisions because of their greater crashworthiness. In fact, the SUV crashworthiness effect exceeds the rollover effect, on average. The implications of these findings are discussed.