Small cars are safer than SUVs
Per a new ICCT report...
Most technologies to increase fuel economy do not affect safety; most technologies to increase safety do not affect fuel economy.
Reducing car mass while improving vehicle structure, using advanced materials and designs, can simultaneously increase fuel economy and safety.
Comparing these Green fuel-sippers on the left to the Red-for-Danger porcus totus we see on the right...
...we discover that
Reducing the weight of heavier SUVs and trucks increases fuel economy and improves the safety of all vehicles on the road.
SUVs are a danger to themselves and others.
WASHINGTON -- The number of people killed in SUVs and rollovers has risen
... even as the nation's overall highway fatality rate has fallen.
Public Citizen finds that
Even the Alliance agrees occupant fatality rates for SUVs are higher than for cars.
SUV insurance rates are HIGHER because of their danger
Part of their danger comes from the sluggish reactions of SUV owners lulled into complacency about their own chances and hence they
tend to overestimate SUV safety and grossly misunderstand the factors behind auto safety. The basic point is that safety comes from avoiding risky situations and quickly responding to danger. It turns out SUV's tend to lull drivers into a false sense of safety
Because SUVs are heavier:
they respond more slowly to danger (e.g., SUV's come to a complete stop much more slowly than many other popular types of cars).
The First Energy Bill out of the SolveSomething Congress mandates 35 MPG by 2020.
The auto industry has factories set up to make one model, year after year. Its a huge machine to turn around. The next three years are already spoken for. Nothing they can change. Then they have ten years to raise their fuel economy 40%. We are part of that equation.
A lot of the problem is so many people, even smart kossacks are under the misapprehension that SUVs make them safer. They are afraid of the other SUVs and so there has been an arms race of sorts.
I was quite surprised to find how many kossacks would not buy this silly looking EVnot on aesthetic grounds but only because it's small - so they felt its endangered by SUVs. In fact it fares better in accidents than bigger cars, even middlesized cars like this one.
I hope that for part of the equation in solving the climate crisis, we don't waste this chance to let Detroit know that we are now ready to buy small fuel-efficient cars. Go add your voice to GMs hard to ignore more than 400,000 people who are demanding a fuel efficient vehicle. Vote, even if it looks ugly because you are voting for the technology to get us off gasoline: the EV.
We have a chance as consumers to re-educate and redirect the auto industry. Because a few models of small fuel efficient vehicles are coming soon to the new Smart USA. We need to wise up about size. Dinosaurs once roamed our plains, and died out. An entire new fauna in a new era was smaller. But they got the job done. I hope everyone will have the courage to break away from thinking that only big cars get you there.
That just because you have snow... or vast distances... or whatever, for some reason you just can't drive anything but a behemoth dinosaur that is not just a danger to others. Its a danger to you.
We have to look to ourselves when we decry the feebleness of what our Senate was able to achieve last week with a new 35 MPG standard. We Americans were part of the problem, buying SUVs because we were afraid of the neighbours SUVs.