Auto123.com - Helping you drive happy

ROLLOVER RATINGS

Obtain the best financial rate for your car loan at Automobile En DirectTecnic
Alex Law

Though you can roll any vehicle over if you try hard enough, some of them are more prone to the risky maneuver than others.

To give the public some idea of how vehicles rate on a comparative scale, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the U.S. has issued rollover resistance ratings for 2001 and posted them on its website.

So you can go to the NHTSA's rollover page and see how a bunch of popular cars, SUVs, minivans and pickups are rated. Not all of the models available for sale in either the U.S. or Canada are there, but it's a start.

In general, the higher a vehicle's center of gravity the more likely it is to roll over, which puts SUVs and other tall vehicles at particular risk. In general.

But you need to remember that each situation is different and that a vehicle will behave differently every time depending on the circumstances, and that a driver can make things worse or better by her actions.

So the NHTSA figures are useful but far from being a definitive guide to your rollover risk.

Alex Law
Alex Law
Automotive expert