[Carfreeliving] SUVs continue to maul passenger cars

[A P Thornley]

like you didn't already know it:


SUVs continue to maul passenger cars

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/30431/

Via Slashdot this morning, there's a report from Physics Today (here's the
PDF of the report) studying the physics of SUVs (aka, 'light trucks') and
passenger cars on the road. The results aren't a super-huge shock: "Light
trucks cannot safely coexist with passenger cars under existing
conditions. The problem becomes particularly urgent as more and more light
trucks are used simply as car substitutes." The study goes on to
illustrate the interaction of SUVs and passenger cars in crashes:

     "...A driver's risk of death in a typical car depends on the type of
vehicle whose front hits his [sic] left side. The risk doesn't change
much from the subcompact cars to large cars, even though large cars
are about 1.6 times as heavy as subcompacts. But being hit by a sport
utility vehicle (SUV) more than doubles the struck driver's risk."

The report from Physics Today:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-1/pdf/vol59no1p49_54.pdf