The Wall Street Journal, "New Rollover Test Could Lead to Safer SUVs"

          How likely is your SUV to roll over in traffic? After decades of research and bitter debate, the federal government unveiled a new test Tuesday that may provide the answer. The test is the first to be based on a vehicle's actual performance, instead of a mathematical formula. It is expected to increase pressure on car makers to speed up technological changes that are intended to reduce rollover accidents.
          Starting this year, the government will subject all vehicles to the new road test -- a series of sharp maneuvers at high speeds. Consumers could start seeing the new ratings by year end, when the government will begin factoring the results of the test into its traditional rating system. The agency plans to post the first batch of its new ratings (probably for a dozen cars or so) on the Web site safercars.gov1 by January at the latest. It won't require manufacturers or dealers to provide the data to customers at the time of sale.
          The new test is the first in a series of actions that are likely to refocus public attention on the safety of sport-utility vehicles and light trucks. Within the next month, a panel of auto- and insurance-industry officials is expected to announce an agreement on new design criteria for SUVs and light trucks intended to reduce deaths and injuries that occur when these bigger, heavier vehicles strike smaller passenger cars.

Reuters, "NHTSA to begin actual driving tests of vehicles, but doubts remain"

          The U.S. government for the first time will begin road tests Tuesday to measure vehicle rollover risk, but consumer and safety groups are not convinced the program will yield the most useful safety information.
          Congress ordered the agency to rate passenger vehicles for rollover risk after the deadly Firestone tire debacle that led to the recall of millions of tires in 2000 and 2001. Nearly 300 people were killed in deadly crashes, many of them rollovers, linked to Firestone tire blowouts.
          There are 22 million sport/utility vehicles on U.S. roads, or about 10 percent of the total number of vehicles. NHTSA released figures this summer showing the number of SUV rollover deaths rose 14 percent in 2002 to more than 2,400.

Associated Press, "Runge brings medical experience to top auto safety job"

          One Saturday many years ago, while working in an emergency room, Dr. Jeffrey Runge had to tell parents that their two children died in an auto accident because they were not wearing seat belts. The next week, Runge treated two teenagers saved by seat belts when their vehicle plunged 30 feet into a construction pit. Auto safety became a second calling for Runge, now head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "Every day is graduate school," Runge says, whether he is pushing for increased seat belt use or venting about the highway fatality rate: 42,815 deaths in 2002, or 117 per day.
          Runge has formed teams to focus on five priorities: increasing seat belt use, decreasing impaired driving, improving data collected on accidents and defects, preventing rollovers and reducing the amount of damage to small vehicles when they are hit by larger ones.

USA Today, "Vehicle stability control gets cool reception in USA"

          What if there were a way of preventing vehicle rollovers, but no one knew about it? That's not far from the situation facing auto suppliers who make stability control systems, which sense when drivers are about to lose control of their vehicles and help them regain it.
          By preventing spinouts and other mishaps, stability control could reduce single-vehicle crashes by up to 35%, studies in Europe and Japan show.
          That kind of crash prevention could save as many as 6,000 lives a year in the USA. Almost 90% of rollover accidents involve a single vehicle and about a quarter of the 42,000 car-crash fatalities every year are in rollovers.

International Herald Tribune, "Rollover Accidents are Cited in a Rise in U.S. Road Deaths"

          New U.S. traffic statistics show that rollover accidents were the leading contributor to an increase in the number of deaths on the nation's roads last year.
          A total of 42,815 people died in traffic accidents in the United States last year, the most since 1990, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday. The agency said a large proportion of the increase was a result of rollover accidents.

Reuters, "Fatal SUV rollovers jump 14 percent "

          The number of people killed in sport/ utility rollover crashes jumped 14 percent last year as total highway deaths hit a 12-year high.
          Car crash injuries fell to an all-time low last year, but SUV rollovers killed more than 2,400 people, a 14% increase from 2001. Nearly two-thirds, or 61 percent, of all SUV fatalities involved rollovers.

USA Today, "Car safety experts push for new stability device"

         The National Transportation Safety Board will hear evidence Tuesday that a promising auto safety feature might have prevented a sport-utility vehicle rollover crash in Maryland that killed five people.
          NTSB crash investigators will recommend that the board encourage widespread installation of the device - called stability control - in new cars and trucks.
          The system senses when a driver is about to lose control of a vehicle, and it applies brakes to certain wheels. That helps the driver maintain or regain control.

USA Today, "SUVs fare poorly in latest government rollover tests"

          Sport-utility vehicles performed poorly in the latest round of rollover tests released Tuesday, with none winning the government's highest safety rating.
          The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released rollover ratings for 14 sport-utility vehicles from the 2003 model year. Most got three out of five stars from the agency. None got a four- or five-star rollover rating.
          That shows little improvement from the 2001 model year, when the Pontiac Aztek was the first SUV to win a four-star rollover rating from NHTSA. In 2002, the Aztek and the Acura MDX earned four stars.

Los Angeles Times, "States Say SUV Ads May Be Misleading"

         Eight state attorneys general sent letters to 16 automakers warning that advertisements portraying sport utility vehicles as handling like cars may be misleading.
         "Too many ads have SUVs zipping around like sports cars, which they are not," Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan said.
          The warning comes after Ford Motor Co.'s $51.5-million settlement in December of consumer fraud claims, involving fatal rollovers of Explorers, brought by the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

USA Today, "Ford Faces Challenge on Bronco rollovers"

          An environmental group with clout is trying to portray Ford Motor - and by implication, most automakers - as lying about safety, hoping to destroy the industry's credibility when it argues that stricter fuel-economy standards would lead to less-safe vehicles.
          Detroit defends the poor fuel economy of SUVs by contending that's the price of safer vehicles, and argues that "increased fuel economy will force it to make small, unsafe cars. We wanted to see how concerned the big seller of SUVs, Ford, was about safety," says Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group (EWG).

United Press International, "Watchdog group: Ford hid rollover data"

          An environmental group wants federal auto safety officials to reopen an investigation into rollovers of Ford Bronco II sport-utility vehicles. Ford ceased production of the boxy Bronco II in 1990 when it was replaced by the Explorer, the world's best-selling SUV for the last 12 years.
          The Washington-based Environmental Working Group said Ford paid an expert witness $5 million over eight years to change his testimony on the vehicle's rollover risk. The watchdog group claimed in a report released on Monday Ford paid David Bickerstaff, a Southfield engineer, some $4,000 a day to testify the Bronco II had a rollover rate no higher than comparable vehicles. The Environmental Working Group review said Ford engineers knew in 1982 the sport utility vehicle was prone to roll over during routine safety tests.

Press Release, “Environmental Working Group Alleges Ford Hid SUV Rollover Evidence For Decades”

          The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group announced that Ford Motor Company has fought mandatory increases in fuel economy for SUVs and other vehicles by invoking fears that higher mileage requirements would result in smaller, more dangerous vehicles. It claim that for Ford safety has been used to beat back fuel efficiency regulations.
          The Environmental Working Group also asserted, based on its review of Ford Motor Company documents, that Ford engineers allegedly were aware in 1982 that the original sport utility vehicle, the Bronco II, was prone to roll over during routine safety tests. With modest stability changes that did not significantly reduce rollover potential, the Bronco II was renamed the Explorer in 1990.

Edmonton Journal, "SUVs No Cure for Worst Winter: Can Provide Sense of invincibility that often puts these drivers upside-down"

          Buffalo gets an average of more than seven feet of snow a year, so its drivers are usually pretty savvy about bad weather.
          But that didn't prevent Cheryl Campbell, a Buffalo police officer, from spinning her General Motors Jimmy sport-utility vehicle on ice a couple of weeks ago.
          "I came around a curve too fast, hit a patch of black ice and did three 360-degree spins without the four-wheel drive helping one bit," she said. "Having an SUV definitely makes winter drivers overconfident. We see it all the time."

USA Today, "Crash tests may make SUVs even more deadly"

          New evidence from the government suggests that key auto crash tests run by the insurance industry and federal regulators might make sport-utility vehicles deadlier to people in small cars. And USA TODAY research finds little proof the tests actually lead to vehicles that better protect their own occupants.

Los Angeles Times, "Automaker data say SUVs are riskier"

          A key automaker group Tuesday released figures showing that people in sport utility vehicles are more likely to die in crashes than are occupants of passenger cars.
          Officials of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers defended the safety of SUVs and said the difference in death risks was "statistically indiscernible," but independent observers said the numbers indicate that automakers may be slowly acknowledging the problems of their most profitable products.

CNN.com Technology, "Voluntary steps urged for SUV safety;
Report says SUVs pose danger to cars"

          The top U.S. auto safety regulator said on Wednesday he would let carmakers voluntarily improve the safety of sport utility vehicles but left open the option of forcing them to make changes if necessary.
          Jeffrey Runge, who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told a congressional hearing the industry can move more swiftly than government on safety improvements. Declaring he would not let members of his family drive some SUV models, Runge nevertheless said some sport utility vehicles are as safe as passenger cars. He did not say which ones were off limits in his family.

Los Angeles Times, "Study questions safety of SUVs"

          Which is safer, a Honda Accord or the nearly one-ton- heavier Ford Expedition? Chances are that the brawny SUV would hold up better in a wreck. Yet drivers of Accords and Expeditions have about the same risk of suffering a fatal accident, new research shows. And when the risk to other drivers is factored in, the Accord is safer by far. Or consider the massive Chevrolet Suburban, identified by the research as safest among popular SUVs. But according to the data, drivers of Suburbans and shrimpy Volkswagen Jettas have about the same fatality rates.
          The novel study's bottom line: Sport utility vehicles and pickups aren't as protective as many of their owners believe, while they are also uniquely dangerous to everyone else.

The Wall Street Journal, "Auto Makers Start To Back Away From Big SUVs: As Outcry Over the Vehicles Grows, Detroit Pushes Smaller, Carlike Models

          Sport-utility vehicles have fattened auto companies' profits and ridden an economic boom into millions of suburban garages. But now, pressures from society, government and the auto industry itself are growing so strong that Detroit is starting to take its first big steps away from reliance on the traditional, huge SUV.
          Anti-SUV crusaders now span an unlikely spectrum. The Sierra Club argues that SUVs contribute to global warming. A religious group protests that Jesus wouldn't drive an SUV. Conservative columnist Arianna Huffington recently launched television ads tying SUVs to terrorism.