The Business Ethics Blog

For those of you who didn’t know already, there’s growing evidence against the safety of SUV’s.

The latest is the result of a study by Partners for Child Passenger Safety, a research project sponsored by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Co.
Here are a couple of media stories reporting on it:
SUVs less safe than passenger cars: study from CTV news
SUV, child safety myth dispelled in latest review (Kansas City Star)
Children’s risk triple in SUV rollovers
Some snippets from the CTV story:

The research was completed by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and found that SUVs have a higher risk of rolling-over during a crash, which supercedes any safety benefits that come from the fact the vehicles are larger and heavier than regular cars.

“SUVs are becoming more popular as family vehicles because they can accommodate multiple child safety seats and their larger size may lead parents to believe SUVs are safer than passenger cars,” said Dennis Durbin, a physician at The Children’s Hospital, and co-author on the study, in a release.
“However, people who use an SUV as their family vehicle should know that SUVs do not provide superior protection for child occupants.”
Durbin said proper restraints that suit a child’s size and age are critically important in SUVs, because of the increased risk of rolling over during a crash.

Here’s an entire website I found, questioning SUV safety.
Here’s a related report from Road & Travel Magazine.

Suggested reading: High and Mighty: SUVs–The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way.