| SUVs Need a Warning Label |
|
|
| Written by Joshua Liberles | |
| Saturday, 20 October 2007 | |
|
While it may seem like SUVs receive a disproportionate amount of bad press (see Indians of the Concrete Jungle and FUH2 for our recent coverage), a study in the British Medical Journal provides yet another reason to SUV-bash.
In addition to guzzling gas, requiring extra resources to build, and taking up extra space, SUVs pose a dramatically increased risk to pedestrians compared to regular passenger cars. A collision between an SUV and a pedestrian is twice as likely to result in a fatality. In fact, researchers from The increased danger posed by these killer cars stems from the design of the front ends of SUVs. Because of the higher platform and impact point, there is more force absorbed by a pedestrian’s upper leg and pelvis. Injuries to vital regions such as the head, thorax, and abdomen become twice as likely in these crashes. The SUV phenomenon has come to resemble an arms race, with drivers feeling unsafe unless behind the wheel of a behemoth the scale of their fellow road warriors. Pedestrians, cyclists, and more conscientious drivers (i.e. in smaller cars) bear the brunt of this escalation. A great first step to a carectomy is to get out of our killer SUVs. Photos via Flickr courtesy of Dr Doom & Megan Cole Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Cars are the most inconvenient convenience we have. We're required to have them, but increasingly, we dislike them. At Carectomy, we're trying to figure out how to extract cars from people.
The operation is a little bit painful, but life afterward is much more awesome. If you're interested in carectomies, sign up to our newsletter, or subscribe our RSS feed below.
Subscribe to this comment's feed