Bannin Sport Utility Vehicles Essay, Research Paper
A Collaboration of Research About Banning Sport Utility Vehicles From the Roads
Eric Larson
Sport utility vehicles should not be permitted on the road due primarily to safety concerns.
I. Safety Concerns
A. Prone to Rollovers
1. High center of gravity
a. Taller than most other vehicles
b. Weighted more towards the top
2. Track width
a. The gap between tires
b. The wider the width, the lower the rollover possibility
3. Many deaths due to rollovers
a. Four times more likely as cars to rollover
b. Passengers are ejected from the vehicle
i. Due to passengers not wearing seat belts
ii. Think they are invincible
iii. If vehicle were to have less chance of rolling over, the person would still be safe.
B. Overloading
1. More room does not mean you can fill the car
a. Too much cargo can result in a higher likelihood to rollover
b. It can be potentially fatal
2. Overloading is easy to do in an SUV
a. With five 180-pound adults, there’s only 100 pounds left for cargo in the average SUV
b. Just because there looks to be a lot of room, does not mean that it can be filled
C. Bumpers
1. Bumpers are higher on SUVs than on most cars
2. Much damage caused in low-speed crashes.
a. More than if the bumpers would meet
c. Damages cost more
D. Car to SUV collision
1. The smaller car comes out worse off
a. 4 out of 5 people who die are in smaller cars
b. There is a relationship between SUV sales and death in accidents with smaller cars
2. Only the SUV is safe
a. The SUV driver is safe
b. The occupants in the other car are injured
E. Poor maneuverability in urban traffic conditions
F. Headlights
1. SUV headlights are too high.
a. Shine into other cars.
b. In traffic, can shine into a lower car s mirrors and blind the occupant.
c. Oncoming SUVs blind other drivers
2. Lower headlights will increase safety
G. SUV owners are not driving them for the intended purpose
1. SUV drivers lack the necessary training to drive as advertised.
a. Commercials show SUVs plowing through snow, mud, and other difficult terrain, making the public want to buy them.
b. Most of the time in these commercials, the fine print says something such as Professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt
c. When people do try to attempt what commercials depict, the results are not good
2. Most drivers do not take their SUV off-road
3. Because they own an SUV, drivers think they can handle anything on the road
a. Drivers believe they are the kings of the road
b. They drive aggressively and carelessly
II. Safety for the elite (buying the way to safety)
A. The prices of SUVs are high
1. In turn, these prices pay for safety
a. To be safe, more money must be spent, which causes drivers of smaller cars to be less safe.
b. A type of discrimination is in play here; only the rich can afford to be safe.
2. People are paying high prices for low gas mileage
B. Paying more money and polluting the air is one way to be safe
III. Pollution
A. The gas mileage of SUVs is low
1. SUVs get an average of 13 miles per gallon
a. Due to poor aerodynamics
b. Height and weight
2. The rise of gas prices and the inefficiency of SUVs have left some drivers desperate
B. Have an effect on global warming
1. U.S.A. is number one global warming polluter
2. Autos contribute greatly
IV. Governmental intervention
A. The SUV loophole allows manufacturers to not pay taxes, and continue making gas-guzzling, polluting vehicles.
1. Just to save money, car makers are killing the environment
2. Cars are not exempt, only low gas mileage SUVs, light trucks and trucks are.
B. SUV owners who use their vehicles for business are getting tax breaks too.
C. The government is contributing to air pollution
1. They are offering this break
2. California has successfully passed a clean air law
The driver of the Ford Excursion was slightly bruised; the driver of the Honda Civic was killed on impact. Sport utility vehicles (SUVs), a breed of light trucks, and a fad that has grown on the American Society within the past several years, have been causing increasing numbers of problems. Recently, a number of rebellious voices have spoken. These include environmental action groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Aside from the common environmental concerns are concerns for safety: for the drivers and occupants of the other vehicle in an accident. Most people purchase sport utility vehicles for the wrong reasons. Many believe they need the functionality of a four wheel drive vehicle, when in truth most do not. Therefore, sport utility vehicles should not be permitted on the road due primarily to safety concerns.
Many American consumers believe that bigger is better. This thought has come into play in the vehicular world. Many Americans are purchasing enormous sport utility vehicles because they feel the need to be safe, and a larger vehicle will do this for them. The problem with this issue is that they are putting occupants of smaller vehicles at risk.
Aside from the inherent dangers that SUVs can cause to nature and other cars, there is a danger that they can cause to themselves and their occupants. SUVs have a high probability to roll over in many instances. That sport utility vehicles are more prone to rolling over and are less maneuverable in urban traffic is well-documented (Baumgartner 1). In one study that tested numerous makes of vehicles on rollover probabilities, SUVs scored the lowest. The Chevrolet Blazer received twenty-two percent to twenty-seven percent. That is more than twice as likely to roll over than a Ford Taurus, which received a four to seven percent chance to rollover ( Predicted 1). Rollovers are the leading cause of death to the occupants in SUVs. And while the bigger, heavier SUVs offer some protection to their occupants in crashes with smaller passenger cars, higher death rates in rollovers offset lower death rates in other types of crashes (Baumgartner 1). The SUV allows the drivers be safe in an accident with another vehicle, but in single vehicle crashes, where rollovers are likely, the driver s safety is compromised.
Two main factors contribute to the possibility of a rollover in a SUV: height and track width. Because SUVs are so tall, they have a high center of gravity. They ride high off the ground, causing most of the weight to center high on the vehicle. An object with a high center of gravity is unstable. When turning a corner, if the driver tries to avoid an obstacle by turning the wheel quickly, the vehicle can spin out of control and possibly rollover. This is due to the shift in weight from one side to the other. Because the vehicle is so high, it may begin to rollover. The second factor is the track width, or the gap between the tires. A wider track width will result in a lower possibility to rollover. This is attributed to the weight of the vehicle being spread over a greater area. The narrower the vehicle, the more advantage that is gained when a force is applied to it. It is easier to tip an object with a small base, and it is more difficult to tip an object with a large and wide base. These laws apply to vehicles. Dividing the height of the vehicle by the track width yields a ratio. The safest vehicles have a larger track width than their height, making the ratio less than one. This ratio applies equally to cars as it deos SUVs, but when comparing the ratio of a car and an SUV, drastic differences can be seen.
The difference of the width to height ratios separate SUVs from cars because SUVs are four times as likely as cars to roll over (Baumgartner 1). Because of this, SUV rollovers cause many deaths. They are just two percent of accidents, but account for thirty-two percent of deaths (Healey 1). This data shows that SUV rollovers are rare, but are quite dangerous. In comparing fatality rates of SUV rollovers to car rollovers, a tremendous difference can be seen. About sixty-three percent of SUV fatalities involve rollovers, while only about twenty-three percent of car deaths do, federal traffic data from nineteen ninety-eight and ninety-nine show (Healey 1). Cars account for fewer deaths in rollover accidents. This is primarily due to the height and width of the vehicle.
The use of seatbelts may be another factor in SUV rollover deaths. More than 9,400 people died in rollover crashes in 1997, the latest year statistics were available. Government officials say some 85 percent of rollover deaths involve passengers not wearing seat belts (Strong 1). Because of this, passengers may be ejected from the vehicle during a rollover. Most of the time this is fatal. Despite government warnings and labels, some people refuse to wear their seatbelts. This could be tied to the fact that people feel invincible in SUVs. If the vehicle were to not rollover in the first place, then none of this would have happened.
Many people purchase a sport utility vehicle because of the large amount of space to carry cargo- which is the utility part of sport utility vehicles. Recent studies have shown that overloading an SUV is easy to do. When looking inside an SUV, it is easy to see that there is lots of cargo space. The average consumer thinks they can fill that cargo space until nothing more can fit. With the car filled, they and their spouse will get out on the road. The driver notices that the vehicle is a bit sluggish on the maneuvers, but continues. On a moderately paced road, the car in front of them quickly stops, causing the SUV to swerve quickly because it would not have been able to break in time. The driver steers left- the front, right tire hits a stick on the road- then slams on the breaks. Due to the minor imbalance from the car hitting the stick and the high center of gravity from the luggage, the vehicle spins out, and begins to rollover. When an SUV is overloaded, handling and braking are affected, and the vehicle could be more prone to rollover (Laliberte 1). If this SUV was not completely filled, the driver might have been able to break in time. Overloading affects breaking because there is more weight in the car. More weight in the SUV creates more momentum, making the vehicles have more difficulty stopping. This, combined with poor breaking ability to begin with is potentially hazardous.
People overload SUVs without knowing it. Most people see the extra room and automatically assume they can fill it. Most vehicle manuals document the load capacity, but few people take the time to read these facts. Consumer Reports tested the weight capacity of a nineteen ninety-seven Ford Explorer.
The five-passenger nineteen ninety-seven Ford Explorer is designed to carry one thousand, twenty-five pounds. Testers loaded five men in the truck, and that equaled one thousand, fifty pounds. With passengers alone, the SUV was overloaded (Laliberte 1).
If those five men were thinking about bringing luggage along with them, they had better think again. Adding more weight to a vehicle that is already overweight is extremely hazardous and increases the rollover possibility, increases breaking distance, and decreases the maneuverability of the vehicle. Ironically, some smaller cars are designed to carry more weight than an SUV can.
Some smaller vehicles can carry more weight than some SUVs. For example, a Ford Taurus station wagon has a load capacity of one thousand, two hundred pounds – nearly two hundred pounds more than the Explorer (Laliberte 1).
According to Consumer Reports, some studies have shown that even the Volkswagen New Beetle can safely carry more weight than the typical SUV. Just the idea of how a large SUV technically cannot carry as much weight as some smaller cars makes it apparent that SUV manufacturers are not designing these vehicles in the right way. A larger vehicle should be able to carry more weight.
The high front end of the Suburban struck Albert in the chest, killing him almost instantly. The force of the five thousand-pound Suburban threw the Concord fifty feet, until the passenger side slammed into a tree, blinding and critically injuring Marianne. The driver of the Suburban was not injured (Nomai 1).
It is an everyday fact that there are collisions between cars, and people die as a result. SUVs are adding to this factor substantially. One reason is due to their bumpers. Bumpers are much higher on SUVs than on cars. Because of this, more damage is done to a car in a collision. Even when the weights are comparable, there are characteristics that still make (light truck vehicles) aggressive like height and stiffness (Skruck 1). The height of these vehicles makes them extremely dangerous. Most doors on ordinary cars are reinforced with side rails from 14 to 20 inches off the ground, the same height as car bumpers. But the bumpers on SUVs can be as high as 30 inches off the ground (Mulshine 1). The SUV bumper towers over the impact rail, making any collision with a car unsafe. Cars are reinforced to protect them against collisions involving other cars, not SUVs. The height of SUVs is often a threat to small cars in accidents, said Panacopoulos, because the front end is often even with the head and shoulders of occupants in smaller cars (Skruck 1). This is the main reason that causes SUVs to be safer in collisions with other cars.
Sport utility vehicles have poor bumpers. In single vehicle crashes, the bumpers have been proven to crumble easily. Along with this comes a substantial repair cost.
Out of four new models of midsize SUVs it tested, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said three had a repair bill of more than four thousand dollars each after hitting an obstacle at five miles per hour. The two thousand Isuzu Trooper suffered eleven thousand, one hundred fifty-eight dollars in damage ( Institute 1).
One possible explanation for the poor bumpers is related to regulations made by the government. Passenger cars have requirements to have bumpers that can hold up to a two and a half-mile per hour, whereas SUVs have no requirement. Light trucks were exempted from safety rules because it was assumed that they were going to be used for the purposes for which they were intended, hauling things around (Mulshine 1). If SUVs were to have the same regulations as passenger cars, then the bumpers would most likely be lowered, and made stronger in order to withstand a low speed crash.
One of the largest problems with SUVs is the damage that they do to another vehicle. If that other vehicle is a passenger car, the results of the collision are terrible. Four out of five people who die in a car to SUV collision are drivers or passengers of smaller cars. In the past twenty years, the number of fatal car to car collisions has decreased, but the number of fatal SUV to car collisions has increased.
The popularity of light trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickups and minivans, has exploded in the past ten years (from one million sales in nineteen ninety to more than three million last year, according to J.D. Power and Associates). And so have the number of fatalities in accidents involving these vehicles versus smaller cars, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Skruck 1).
There is a direct relationship between the sale of SUVs and the number of deaths in accidents with smaller cars. With more SUVs on the road, the more accidents will be caused. That is true with any vehicle. The more cars that are put out on the roads will increase the odds of getting in an accident, but the number of accidents is not what is being compared. The number of fatal accidents is what is looked at when comparing the two. In 1996, there were about 5,100 fatality victims who were occupants in cars struck by light truck vehicles, according to the NHTSA, compared to 4,000 fatalities in accidents where a car strikes another car (Skruck 1). By comparing these numbers, it can be seen that SUVs create more risk of death when in a collision than do cars.
The largest SUVs have many characteristics that attribute to poor maneuverability. The high center of gravity, their weight and the momentum gained traveling at high speeds all make SUVs difficult to maneuver. Over-size SUVs, although much safer statistically for their occupants, can nevertheless be dangerous as well – especially to others – with their poor braking, limited maneuverability and significant crash incompatibility (Millers 1). If an obstacle appears on the road suddenly, the vehicle might not be able to swerve out of the way. SUVs are not cars, and they handle differently. This is usually stated in most driver manuals, but most people continue to drive SUVs as they do cars, causing potentially fatal situations.
Another concern of SUVs is not only a safety factor, but also an irritability factor. They’re also considering regulations on headlight height, an aspect of the SUV that is even more irritating than the attitudes of their drivers (Mulshine 1). Because the bumpers are high on SUVs, the headlights have to be higher too. When an SUV pulls up behind a small car, its headlights can shine right into the rearview mirrors, which can be reflected into the driver s eyes. All oncoming traffic during the night shines light into the driver s eyes. SUVs do the same thing, only it is worse. The small amount of added height makes the angle of light that is shining at the driver greater. Therefor, the direct rays of light are hitting the driver for a longer period than a passenger car would. By lowering the bumpers on the vehicles, the headlights would also be moved down solving the problems that are created.