[cogitator]

You get what you pay for. That seems obvious enough!

[Mr. Bird]

Other studies have not considered combined risk, which looks at both risk to the driver of the model in question and risk to the drivers of all other vehicles involved in crashes with that model. The study found that, when measuring the combined risk, most cars are safer than SUVs, while pickup trucks are much less safe than all other types of vehicle

Well, no s***. An SUV slamming into a Geo is going to cause a lot of hurt, and not to the SUV driver. But using the "combined risk" method here, the SUV gets docked for safety as much as the Geo. Brilliant.

This is like saying that guns are just as dangerous to the person pointing it as the person he is pointing it toward. This is Green crap.

[spqrzilla9]

This "study" is bogus crap, first of all the NHTSA studies did compare relative risk - all one needs to do is to actually read them. Secondly, the NHTSA studies didn't just claim that SUV's were "safer" than subcompacts but showed that lighter subcompacts were more dangerous than heavier subcompacts.

[MJemison]

...small cars....have been...as safe as larger ones.

As my kids would say, "Um, yeah, riiiiight."

[TC Rider]

Having scraped a couple of Hundais off of the back of my SUVs, I would beg to differ.

What's not safe about this heavy truck?

[Blue Screen of Death]

(1/2M)*(V²)

[Defend the Second]

Key to this piece of propaganda is the use of "combined risk" to estimate risk to both the driver of your car and the risk of injury to others involved in the accident. It appears from this article that the following two accidents would yield identical safety ratings: Accident 1: Geo with one driver crashes into Geo with one driver and both die. Rating = -2. Accident 2: Geo with two people crashes into Surburban with two people. Geo people dead, Surburban people walk away. Rating = -2. By this logic the Suburban is no safer than the Geo. But I sure do know which one I want me and mine to be in...

Not to be too harsh about it, but I don't buy a Suburban to protect the other guy. I buy it and drive it to protect me and my family. Screw these people and their study.

[Still Thinking]

To determine quality, Ross and Wenzel used quantifiable parameters such as new car price, used car price, Consumer Reports safety ratings, and country of origin.

OK, I have no beef with trying to use price as a predictor of quality, although I don't think one necessarly follow the other. But how is country of origin supposed to predict quality?? Are the weenies saying that a car made somewhere other than the US is automatically presumed to be better??

And what about using Consumer Reports safety ratings to predict quality?? If they find out these cars actually are safer, it just amounts to saying "Yeah, the cars that those other guys said are, um, safer." If they are trying to correlate to quality, why don't they use the repair ratings as a quality measure? This way, their thesis is "proven" by presuming it to be true in the study design.

[Post Toasties]

My one foray into compact cars (Dodge Aries) was terminated suddenly one morning (about six months after I paid it off) on the way to work by a college student who blew two red lights and hit me at 50mph without even putting the brakes on.

[Physicist]

They can say what they want, but they can't repeal Newton's second law:

F=ma

The bigger the "m" (mass), the smaller the "a" (acceleration). The "a" is what kills.

Certainly, for a given mass, safety is strongly dependent upon design, but that doesn't change the fact that for a given design, heavier is safer.

[steveegg]

My, oh my; how far we have come from the "bad old days" when the safety nazis were telling us that the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto were inherently unsafe furing the "snooze" portion of driver's ed. For those of you too young to remember, the Insurance Highway Institute went and slammed a bunch of Vegas (a very light subcompact from the mid-70s) and Impalas (VERY heavy in those days) together at roughly 40 mph and filmed it. Without exception, the tin can was crushed and flung backwards, while the boat barely had a scratch.

[Paradox]

I have mentioned this in other SUV threads. There are dangers associated with SUV's that arent there in other cars, especially cars of similar weight. You take a nice big Crown Victoria, thats probably one of the safest cars around.

I have seen two SUV's roll over WITHOUT AN IMPACT, while performing an emergency lane change. Any Hyundai Accent would have performed the maneuver safely.

A false sense of safety is not a good thing.