Much of the safety value you present for large family SUVs is a consequence of who is driving them and how, and how much, they are driven. The type of person who drives one has fewer accidents, in other words. It is not likely that these big SUV drivers would have significantly more accidents if they drove minivans. Actually, they would probably have fewer because the minivans can handle and brake their way out of accidents that the SUV whales cannot.
Would the net injury/mortality be lower, given the "same" accident? Probably not for the former SUV whale drivers switching to minivans, but it would certainly be lower for whomever they hit (and that would be a smaller number to begin with).
EDIT: I see you have anticipated some of what I say.
At the site, these tidbits:
In single-vehicle crashes, two-wheel-drive utility vehicles had the highest number of deaths per registered vehicle (123 per million) in 1999. In multiple-vehicle crashes, cars had a higher number of deaths per registered vehicle (79 per million) than pickups and utility vehicles.
The site treats minivans as cars; our Plymouth Grand Voyager would, by wheelbase, be classified as a "large" car, with 112 deaths per million vehicles, lower than everything else except a 4WD SUV weighing more than 5000 lbs.(90 deaths per million vehicles).
There are problems with the data, most notably that while the text discusses 2WD SUVs, the graph and chart do not have a thing about 2WD SUVs. |
