In Canada, driving a truck or SUV makes motorists as much as 224 per cent more likely to kill someone in a collision
Big cars kill. They kill because their bumpers don’t line up with sedans and station wagons. They kill because they have stiff frames and they kill because they’re heavier. For every 450 kilograms added to the weight of a car , a vehicle becomes 40 per cent more likely to turn an otherwise survivable crash into a fatal collision.
For years, automobile safety researchers had focused mostly on which vehicles were best at keeping their occupants alive. “I thought, what if we turned this on its head and found the most lethal vehicles out there?” says Gabler by phone from his office at Virginia Tech.Article content In Montreal, scientists sifted through data on three million Canadian crashes and found driving an SUV instead of a car makes a driver 224 per cent more likely to cause a fatal crash. A study from the University of California, San Diego, meanwhile, found every life saved in a large vehicle came at the expense of 4.3 dead pedestrians, motorcyclists and car drivers.
The sentiment comes up often in online debates over automobile safety. “I care most about the people in MY vehicle,” reads one forum post by an SUV driver, saying they are only trying to protect their family from “moronic drivers Facebooking their way to oblivion.” On another forum, a driver claims, “My SUV protects me from the actions of IDIOTS.” Part of this is because few drivers think they will be the ones to cause a collision.
And the safety disparity goes up precipitously when it comes to aftermarket modifications, such as lift kits and oversized tires.
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