SUVs: The Carnage Continues
Last week I wrote about the news that SUVs, which many people buy in the belief that they provide greater safety for children than cars do, are in fact spectacularly unsafe for children.
Now comes news from the Times that "four out of every five new sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks do not adequately protect occupants from whiplash in low-speed rear-end collisions."
"People see S.U.V.'s and they think of them as being much safer than cars," said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "Certainly with regard to head restraints, what our study is showing is many of them don't provide good protection from whiplash, which you might expect."
It's unclear to me what SUVs do provide good protection from.... We know that they're dangerous for people driving cars that get hit by them; we know they're dangerous for
people who get hit by them; we know they're dangerous for passengers, who are often killed when SUVs rollover; we know they're dangerous for children; and now we know they're dangerous for drivers.
But hey, at least the kids can watch dvd's and drink from their cupholders while the SUVs roll over and give them whiplash.....
