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SUV SAFETY STATISTICS & LINKS TO RELATED ARTICLE
   

From Washington D.C.
"Federal regulators today will propose that automakers place eye-catching labels inside some sport-utility trucks warning that they are more prone to rollover accidents than cars. The labels, sought by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, would employ bright colors and depict a vehicle leaning sideways with the words: Warning: High Risk of Rollover."

Comment from 20/20 ABC News, Interview Excerpt:
Cause of Roll-overs: Forrest Folck, Accident Investigator: "...these vehicles (SUV's) were initially designed for off road use... But the very qualities that give SUV's the ability to go down heart-stopping mountain trails at slow speeds can lead to deadly rollovers at highway speeds ... if you're at freeway speeds and you jack the steering or turn the steering at too fast an input, you're going to roll over. The center of gravity and soft suspension allows the vehicle to lean too much."
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:
"According to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), the rollover rate for SUV's is double that of all vehicles. Between 1991 and 1994, about 9,000 people have died from rollovers; 10,000 in 1996 alone."
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Link
Excerpt from detailed report:
"Small utility vehicles are disproportionately involved in fatal rollover crashes. The single vehicle rollover death rate in these vehicles in 1997 was more than 7 times as high as the rate in the largest cars (124 deaths per million registered vehicles compared with 16)."

"Single-vehicle rollover crashes accounted for 50 percent of occupant deaths in utility vehicles in 1997 compared with 34 percent of deaths in pickups and 18 percent of deaths in automobiles."
Detroit, Dec. 12, 1997 "People riding in sport utility vehicles are just as likely to die in crashes as those in passenger cars because sport utilities roll over more often, according to a new study presented here this week.

Sport utility sales are increasing in popularity in part because the vehicles instill a greater sense of safety due to their larger size and higher driving position than passenger cars, but the study by two industry safety consultants analyzed government crash data and found that sport utility vehicles are four times as likely to roll over in fatal crashes as cars.

Higher death rates in rollovers offset lower death rates in other types of crashes. "
Highway Loss Data Institute Link
Los Angeles Times, Thursday, April 9, 1998
In 1996, about 30% of all passenger deaths involved crashes in which a vehicle rolled over. Single vehicle rollover crashes accounted for 19% of passenger deaths in cars, compared with 35% in pickups and 53% in SUV's, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety."