Big cars kill: ‘Monster’ vehicles may make Canadians feel safer, but they’re more likely to cause fatal collisions
July 31, two thousand fifteen 12:46 PM EDT
Last Updated August 7, two thousand fifteen 11:15 AM EDT
Michelle Taylor’s last words, before she was crushed to death by a truck tire, were, “What does this idiot think he’s doing?”
With her 83-year-mother in the passenger seat, the 53-year-old high school teacher was driving along Ontario’s Highway nine in a Buick Regal when a truck began to drift over from the opposing lane.
The vehicle was a burgundy Ford pickup customized with off-road tires and an aftermarket “lift kit.” And at the wheel was a teenager who had fallen asleep.
From the dad’s perspective, it was the smartest thing he could have done
In the split 2nd before influence, Taylor slowed almost to a stop and pulled as far off the shoulder as she could. The very first thing the truck’s bumper would have hit was the Buick’s fetish mask.
“The thing just spinned right up and into the cab and crushed her,” says her spouse, James Taylor. “On the positive side, it was instant death for my wifey.”
The driver of the truck emerged virtually unscathed. A month after the collision, he posted “miss you” on a Facebook photo of a large truck that was presumably the vehicle involved in the crash. Just this year, he was pridefully posting photos of his newest equipment: a GMC Denali with custom-built front bumper, off-road tires and, once again, a lift kit.
“From the dad’s perspective, it was the smartest thing he could have done,” says Taylor of the parental decision to equip a teenager with a “monster truck.”
“’I have an irresponsible youthful lad who’s wanting to drive, I’m going to give him the thickest possible thing on the road so he doesn’t get hurt,’ and sure enough, he never got hurt.’”
Big cars kill. They kill because their bumpers don’t line up with sedans and station wagons. They kill because they have stiff frames and they kill because they’re stronger. For every four hundred fifty kilograms added to the weight of a car (toughly the difference inbetween a Toyota Prius and a Ford Taurus), a vehicle becomes forty per cent more likely to turn an otherwise survivable crash into a fatal collision.
Canadians like big cars because they keep their occupants alive and, thanks to a fresh era of low gas prices, they’re buying them in record numbers. In the very first half of 2015, pickup trucks claimed the very first, 2nd and fourth catches sight of for best-selling vehicles in Canada.
Since Jan. 1, 58,318 Ford F-series pickups and 47,000 Ram pickups have been sold in Canada. In a distant third place is the Honda Civic, with 30,000.
The trade-off, played out on Canadian roads every day, is that these cars are dramatically enhancing the chance of killing everybody else.
“For every pickup truck driver killed in a side influence, twenty five were killed in a car,” says Clay Gabler, a U.S.-based “crash compatibility” pioneer.
For years, automobile safety researchers had focused mostly on which vehicles were best at keeping their occupants alive.
“I thought, what if we turned this on its head and found the most lethal vehicles out there?” says Gabler by phone from his office at Virginia Tech.
For every pickup truck driver killed in a side influence, twenty five were killed in a car
His finding, very first published as the SUV trend was picking up steam, was that American roads were packed with cars “not designed to play nicely with each other.”
In just one of the years studied, 1997, Five,373 Americans were killed in a crash inbetween a van or truck. Of those, an incredible eighty one per cent had been car passengers.
Not only were the trucks and vans significantly stronger, their higher “ride height” was causing them to shred through passenger compartments, unhindered by barriers such as bumpers or door sills.
In the years since, fresh research has only bolstered the findings.
At the University of Buffalo, medical researchers found when an SUV hits a car, even if the car has a better crash test rating, its driver was still four times more likely to wind up dead in the collision.
“In frontal crashes, SUVs tend to rail over shorter passenger vehicles … crushing the occupant of the passenger car,” said explore author Dietrich Jehle, a professor of emergency medicine.
This helps explains how cars that consistently pass crash tests with flying colours, such as the Honda Civic and the Nissan Cube, are some of the deadliest on the road.
In Montreal, scientists sifted through data on three million Canadian crashes and found driving an SUV instead of a car makes a driver two hundred twenty four per cent more likely to cause a fatal crash.
I care most about the people in MY vehicle,” reads one forum post by an SUV driver
A investigate from the University of California, San Diego, meantime, found every life saved in a large vehicle came at the expense of Four.Trio dead pedestrians, motorcyclists and car drivers.
In essence, of all the consumer choices Canadians will make in their life, buying an unnecessarily large car is the one most likely to maim or kill a stranger.
Back in the late 1990s, when Gabler was publishing the very first groundbreaking studies on the dangers of large vehicles, he says he was astonished at how people reacted: SUV sales spiked.
John LeBlanc for Driving
“I’m not a sociologist, but people look after themselves and their family,” says Gabler. “It’s a very human thing to do, I think.”
The sentiment comes up often in online debates over automobile safety.
“I care most about the people in MY vehicle,” reads one forum post by an SUV driver, telling they are only attempting to protect their family from “moronic drivers Facebooking their way to oblivion.”
On another forum, a driver claims, “My SUV protects me from the deeds of IDIOTS.”
The other fellow has a big car, so you’re going to feel unsafe unless you have a big one too
Part of this is because few drivers think they will be the ones to cause a collision. A famed one thousand nine hundred eighty one explore found ninety three per cent of American drivers rated themselves as better than the median.
Drivers are also very prone to “illusory self-assessment” — being hyper-sensitive to the mistakes of other drivers, while rationalizing their own driving errors.
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File
Going for a big car is also frequently backed up by the experts.
“Safest vehicle” lists are packed with SUVs. In the same University of Buffalo probe that found SUVs were rolling over passenger cars, the authors were keen to note the “increased safety of SUVs.”
The result is an “arms race.”
“The other boy has a big car, so you’re going to feel unsafe unless you have a big one too,” said Michael Anderson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has examined the social cost of driving on highways with increasingly larger cars.
Highways packed exclusively with Honda Civics would be about as safe as highways packed exclusively with Cadillac Escalades, said Anderson. The danger comes from a world where the Civics are smashing into Escalades.
(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
And the safety disparity goes up precipitously when it comes to aftermarket modifications, such as lift kits and oversized tires.
After his wife’s death, Taylor and his friends championed a pressure group to regulate vehicle height, the Bumper to Bumper Campaign.
Laws governing vehicle height vary insanely across Canada. In Prince Edward Island, it is illegal to raise a vehicle more than four inches. While Alberta has rules on passenger cars, there are almost no standards for trucks or utility vehicles.
“There truly isn’t an enforceable legislation that restricts you from adding suspension modifications — and we don’t track any other modifications,” said Staff Sgt. Jamie Johnston, traffic services coordinator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Johnston is also a 20-year veteran of crash reconstruction on the province’s roads, including Highway 63, the famous “Highway of Death.”
He said he cannot reminisce any crashes where a lifted truck caused otherwise-preventable fatalities, but he’s seen slew of petite cars turned to mush by larger vehicles.
“The smaller car is always going to feel the thicker bump,” said Johnston. “Mass is always the determining issue.”
Big cars kill: Monster – vehicles may make Canadians feel safer, but they – re more likely to cause fatal collisions, National Post
Big cars kill: ‘Monster’ vehicles may make Canadians feel safer, but they’re more likely to cause fatal collisions
July 31, two thousand fifteen 12:46 PM EDT
Last Updated August 7, two thousand fifteen 11:15 AM EDT
Michelle Taylor’s last words, before she was crushed to death by a truck tire, were, “What does this idiot think he’s doing?”
With her 83-year-mother in the passenger seat, the 53-year-old high school teacher was driving along Ontario’s Highway nine in a Buick Regal when a truck commenced to drift over from the opposing lane.
The vehicle was a burgundy Ford pickup customized with off-road tires and an aftermarket “lift kit.” And at the wheel was a teenager who had fallen asleep.
From the dad’s perspective, it was the smartest thing he could have done
In the split 2nd before influence, Taylor slowed almost to a stop and pulled as far off the shoulder as she could. The very first thing the truck’s bumper would have hit was the Buick’s rubber hood.
“The thing just spinned right up and into the cab and crushed her,” says her spouse, James Taylor. “On the positive side, it was instant death for my wifey.”
The driver of the truck emerged virtually unscathed. A month after the collision, he posted “miss you” on a Facebook photo of a large truck that was presumably the vehicle involved in the crash. Just this year, he was pridefully posting photos of his newest equipment: a GMC Denali with custom-made front bumper, off-road tires and, once again, a lift kit.
“From the dad’s perspective, it was the smartest thing he could have done,” says Taylor of the parental decision to equip a teenager with a “monster truck.”
“’I have an irresponsible youthfull lad who’s wanting to drive, I’m going to give him the largest possible thing on the road so he doesn’t get hurt,’ and sure enough, he never got hurt.’”
Big cars kill. They kill because their bumpers don’t line up with sedans and station wagons. They kill because they have stiff frames and they kill because they’re stronger. For every four hundred fifty kilograms added to the weight of a car (harshly the difference inbetween a Toyota Prius and a Ford Taurus), a vehicle becomes forty per cent more likely to turn an otherwise survivable crash into a fatal collision.
Canadians like big cars because they keep their occupants alive and, thanks to a fresh era of low gas prices, they’re buying them in record numbers. In the very first half of 2015, pickup trucks claimed the very first, 2nd and fourth catches sight of for best-selling vehicles in Canada.
Since Jan. 1, 58,318 Ford F-series pickups and 47,000 Ram pickups have been sold in Canada. In a distant third place is the Honda Civic, with 30,000.
The trade-off, played out on Canadian roads every day, is that these cars are dramatically enlargening the chance of killing everybody else.
“For every pickup truck driver killed in a side influence, twenty five were killed in a car,” says Clay Gabler, a U.S.-based “crash compatibility” pioneer.
For years, automobile safety researchers had focused mostly on which vehicles were best at keeping their occupants alive.
“I thought, what if we turned this on its head and found the most lethal vehicles out there?” says Gabler by phone from his office at Virginia Tech.
For every pickup truck driver killed in a side influence, twenty five were killed in a car
His finding, very first published as the SUV trend was picking up steam, was that American roads were packed with cars “not designed to play nicely with each other.”
In just one of the years studied, 1997, Five,373 Americans were killed in a crash inbetween a van or truck. Of those, an incredible eighty one per cent had been car passengers.
Not only were the trucks and vans significantly stronger, their higher “ride height” was causing them to shred through passenger compartments, unhindered by barriers such as bumpers or door sills.
In the years since, fresh research has only bolstered the findings.
At the University of Buffalo, medical researchers found when an SUV hits a car, even if the car has a better crash test rating, its driver was still four times more likely to wind up dead in the collision.
“In frontal crashes, SUVs tend to rail over shorter passenger vehicles … crushing the occupant of the passenger car,” said explore author Dietrich Jehle, a professor of emergency medicine.
This helps explains how cars that consistently pass crash tests with flying colours, such as the Honda Civic and the Nissan Cube, are some of the deadliest on the road.
In Montreal, scientists sifted through data on three million Canadian crashes and found driving an SUV instead of a car makes a driver two hundred twenty four per cent more likely to cause a fatal crash.
I care most about the people in MY vehicle,” reads one forum post by an SUV driver
A probe from the University of California, San Diego, meantime, found every life saved in a large vehicle came at the expense of Four.Three dead pedestrians, motorcyclists and car drivers.
In essence, of all the consumer choices Canadians will make in their life, buying an unnecessarily large car is the one most likely to maim or kill a stranger.
Back in the late 1990s, when Gabler was publishing the very first groundbreaking studies on the dangers of large vehicles, he says he was astonished at how people reacted: SUV sales spiked.
John LeBlanc for Driving
“I’m not a sociologist, but people look after themselves and their family,” says Gabler. “It’s a very human thing to do, I think.”
The sentiment comes up often in online debates over automobile safety.
“I care most about the people in MY vehicle,” reads one forum post by an SUV driver, telling they are only attempting to protect their family from “moronic drivers Facebooking their way to oblivion.”
On another forum, a driver claims, “My SUV protects me from the deeds of IDIOTS.”
The other man has a big car, so you’re going to feel unsafe unless you have a big one too
Part of this is because few drivers think they will be the ones to cause a collision. A famed one thousand nine hundred eighty one investigate found ninety three per cent of American drivers rated themselves as better than the median.
Drivers are also very prone to “illusory self-assessment” — being hyper-sensitive to the mistakes of other drivers, while rationalizing their own driving errors.
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File
Going for a big car is also frequently backed up by the experts.
“Safest vehicle” lists are packed with SUVs. In the same University of Buffalo investigate that found SUVs were rolling over passenger cars, the authors were keen to note the “increased safety of SUVs.”
The result is an “arms race.”
“The other man has a big car, so you’re going to feel unsafe unless you have a big one too,” said Michael Anderson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has examined the social cost of driving on highways with increasingly larger cars.
Highways packed exclusively with Honda Civics would be about as safe as highways packed exclusively with Cadillac Escalades, said Anderson. The danger comes from a world where the Civics are smashing into Escalades.
(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
And the safety disparity goes up precipitously when it comes to aftermarket modifications, such as lift kits and oversized tires.
After his wife’s death, Taylor and his friends championed a pressure group to regulate vehicle height, the Bumper to Bumper Campaign.
Laws governing vehicle height vary frantically across Canada. In Prince Edward Island, it is illegal to raise a vehicle more than four inches. While Alberta has rules on passenger cars, there are almost no standards for trucks or utility vehicles.
“There indeed isn’t an enforceable legislation that restricts you from adding suspension modifications — and we don’t track any other modifications,” said Staff Sgt. Jamie Johnston, traffic services coordinator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Johnston is also a 20-year veteran of crash reconstruction on the province’s roads, including Highway 63, the famous “Highway of Death.”
He said he cannot recall any crashes where a lifted truck caused otherwise-preventable fatalities, but he’s seen slew of puny cars turned to mush by larger vehicles.
“The smaller car is always going to feel the thicker bump,” said Johnston. “Mass is always the determining issue.”