New Book Raps SUV's And Drivers

The longtime Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times Keith Bradsher lays bare the dangers posed by the most popular type of American family car: the sport utility vehicle, and expounds the "calamitous safety and environmental record" of SUVs. He believes that as the current fleet of SUVs ages, the problems will only become worse.

Excerpt From High and Mighty:

"The full-page newspaper advertisement seems at first glance to suggest that the Jeep Grand Cherokee is an especially safe vehicle. The top half of the page is occupied by five aging insurance policies. "Earthquake Insurance Certificate" says one policy with a brown border and elaborate calligraphy. "Avalanche Insurance Policy" says another policy with an ornate blue border. Floods, mud slides, and tornadoes are covered by the other policies.

Across the middle of the page is a simple message printed in large, black letters: "Jeep Grand Cherokee. Still the best insurance policy out there."

Below the slogan is a Jeep balanced on four boulders. Underneath the vehicle, in somewhat smaller type, is a brief paragraph extolling its safety: "It's your classic man vs. nature struggle. Man goes out in 4x4--nature gets nasty. So, we engineered Jeep Grand Cherokee to be one of the safest and most capable 4x4s out there. Its legendary four-wheel drive shows no fear in the face of a blizzard. Its braking system helps you stop even when the rain or sleet or snow hasn't."

Detroit has long been subtly suggesting that SUVs are safer than cars. But the ad writers cagily avoid making explicit claims, with good reason. The truth is that for a wide range of real-world hazards, driving an SUV is a safety liability, not an asset.

If a potential crash looms, an SUV's brakes will stop you no faster than a car's brakes and may take longer, especially in slippery conditions. An SUV will not allow you to swerve around a hazard as handily as a car. If you hit another vehicle or a solid object, you will be less protected from injury in an SUV than in a car of the same weight. And if an icy patch sends you sliding to the edge of the road, or if another vehicle delivers a glancing blow that pushes you into a curb or guard rail, an SUV is far more likely than a car to kill you or paralyze you by rolling over."

Bradsher on Auto Makers: "The manufacturers' market researchers have decided that millions of baby boomers want an adventurous image and care almost nothing about putting others at risk to achieve it, so they have told auto engineers to design vehicles accordingly. The result has been unusually tall, menacing vehicles like the Dodge Durango, with its grilleresembling a jungle cat's teeth and its flared fenders that look like bulging muscles in a savage jaw."

Bradsher on SUV buyers: "They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities."

Publishers Synopsis:

SUVs have taken over America's roads. Ad campaigns promote them as safer and "greener" than ordinary cars and easy to handle in bad weather. But very little about the SUV's image is accurate. They poorly protect occupants and inflict horrific damage in crashes, they guzzle gasoline, and they are hard to control.

Keith Bradsher has been at the forefront in reporting the calamitous safety and environmental record of SUVs, including the notorious Ford-Firestone rollover controversy. In High and Mighty, he traces the checkered history of SUVs, showing how they came to be classified not as passenger cars but as light trucks, which are subject to less strict regulations on safety, gas mileage, and air pollution. He makes a powerful case that these vehicles are even worse than we suspect--for their occupants, for other motorists, for pedestrians and for the planet itself. In the tradition of Unsafe at Any Speed and Fast Food Nation, Bradsher's book is a damning exposé of an industry that puts us all at risk, whether we recognize it or not.

A NOTE FROM KEITH BRADSHER

For a little over a year after The New York Times assigned me to be the paper's Detroit bureau chief, I was as enthusiastic as every auto writer about the boom times that SUVs had brought to the auto industry. Then my editor asked me what happened when SUVs hit cars. It turned out that the stiff, high-riding underbodies designed for optimal off-road driving performance had made SUVs three times as likely as cars to kill the occupants of the vehicles they hit.

I have been investigating SUV problems ever since. The failures of Firestone tires on Ford Explorers, so much in the news last year, are a small part of a much deadlier problem: that SUVs are poorly suited to replace family sedans. SUVs have been shrewdly designed to exploit dozens of safety and regulatory loopholes, and they have also emerged as a disaster for safety and the environment. As the fleet of SUVs on America's roads grows older--and larger--these problems will only become worse. As I kept writing about these issues for the Times, auto executives became furious, occasionally yelling at me until they turned bright red. I don't think they're going to be too pleased with High and Mighty, either.

About the Author

Bradsher was the Detroit bureau chief of The New York Times from 1996 to 2001. He won the George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A Times reporter since 1989, he is currently the paper's Hong Kong bureau chief.