Not all midsize SUVs had high death rates in single-vehicle rollovers. The Lexus RX 300, Toyota 4Runner, Nissan Pathfinder, and Acura MDX had six or fewer rollover deaths per million vehicle years.
When buying used you have to take what you can get, but when buying new it's important to look for electronic stability control in a vehicle, since that can greatly reduce the chance that a vehicle will slide off the road and encounter a situation that engenders a rollover.
Small SUVs have had high rollover death rates in previous years, Lund notes, ''but as the RAV4 indicates this may be changing. One reason may be that the drivers are changing. It used to be that younger people, especially young men, drove small SUVs, but now many women drive them, including older women. In addition, as vehicle manufacturers redesign their small SUVs they're addressing the rollover problem in the designs, making these vehicles more stable and less likely to roll over.''
Lund says the rates of driver death in all crashes plus rates in multiple-vehicle, single-vehicle, and single-vehicle rollover crashes were computed for 199 passenger vehicle models (1999-2002) with at least 120,000 registered vehicle years or 20 driver deaths during the study years.
Each model's rate represents the reported number of driver deaths divided by the model's number of registered years. Data are from the U.S government's Fatality Analysis Reporting System and registration counts from The Polk Company.
Lund notes that, among the vehicles, exposure varies considerably. For example, the number of registered vehicle years for midsize two-door cars is nearly three million in the U.S. This compares with fewer than 300,000 registered years for large two-door cars.
Because of this variability, Lund says, the 95 percent confidence intervals were computed with upper and lower bounds indicating the precision of the computed rates for all crash types.
The rates reflect primarily the influence of a vehicle's design and patterns of use, says Lund. ''Because driver demographics can be a major influence, the death rate for each vehicle was adjusted according to the proportion of deaths of women 25-64 years old. These drivers are involved in fewer fatal crashes per licensed driver. For most vehicles the rates were adjusted by less than 20 percent.''
This is the first year the IIHS has adjusted the rates to account for some driver characteristics, Lund says. ''The adjustment takes away some of the differences among vehicles caused by differences in driver gender,'' he claims. ''Other demographic factors still influence the death rates, but more of the differences in the rates reflect the vehicles.''
When buying used you have to take what you can get, but when buying new it's important to look for electronic stability control in a vehicle, since that can greatly reduce the chance that a vehicle will slide off the road and encounter a situation that engenders a rollover.
Small SUVs have had high rollover death rates in previous years, Lund notes, ''but as the RAV4 indicates this may be changing. One reason may be that the drivers are changing. It used to be that younger people, especially young men, drove small SUVs, but now many women drive them, including older women. In addition, as vehicle manufacturers redesign their small SUVs they're addressing the rollover problem in the designs, making these vehicles more stable and less likely to roll over.''
Lund says the rates of driver death in all crashes plus rates in multiple-vehicle, single-vehicle, and single-vehicle rollover crashes were computed for 199 passenger vehicle models (1999-2002) with at least 120,000 registered vehicle years or 20 driver deaths during the study years.
Each model's rate represents the reported number of driver deaths divided by the model's number of registered years. Data are from the U.S government's Fatality Analysis Reporting System and registration counts from The Polk Company.
Lund notes that, among the vehicles, exposure varies considerably. For example, the number of registered vehicle years for midsize two-door cars is nearly three million in the U.S. This compares with fewer than 300,000 registered years for large two-door cars.
Because of this variability, Lund says, the 95 percent confidence intervals were computed with upper and lower bounds indicating the precision of the computed rates for all crash types.
The rates reflect primarily the influence of a vehicle's design and patterns of use, says Lund. ''Because driver demographics can be a major influence, the death rate for each vehicle was adjusted according to the proportion of deaths of women 25-64 years old. These drivers are involved in fewer fatal crashes per licensed driver. For most vehicles the rates were adjusted by less than 20 percent.''
This is the first year the IIHS has adjusted the rates to account for some driver characteristics, Lund says. ''The adjustment takes away some of the differences among vehicles caused by differences in driver gender,'' he claims. ''Other demographic factors still influence the death rates, but more of the differences in the rates reflect the vehicles.''