September 24, 1997

Deadly Crashes Increase Between Cars, Light Trucks 

By KEITH BRADSHER

[D]ETROIT -- Albert and Marianne Hassan were driving their Chrysler Concorde
through Merrick, N.Y., last spring to pick up their 3-week-old son when a
Chevrolet Suburban slammed into their car at an intersection. The Suburban's high
front end pushed in the driver's side door, hitting Hassan in the chest. He died
quickly of internal bleeding.

The 5,000-pound sport utility vehicle shoved the 3,300-pound car, a midsize
family sedan, sideways for 50 feet until the other side of the car was crushed
against a tree, blinding and critically injuring Mrs. Hassan. The driver of the
Suburban was not injured.

Crashes like this one, in which the police accident investigator says the
Suburban's weight and high front end worsened the injuries, are becoming more
common. The number of collisions between a car and a light truck -- a sport
utility vehicle, pickup truck or mini-van -- has been rising steadily. While they
still make up a minority of two-vehicle crashes, these accidents now account for
the majority of deaths in such crashes, and 80 percent of these deaths are in the
cars.

The problem has alarmed a few safety researchers and some insurers. "It's
something we need to work on desperately quickly," said C. Adrian Hobbs, the
secretary of a new, mostly European panel studying collisions between vehicles of
different sizes. "If nothing's done, people are going to continue to be killed
unnecessarily."

Yet little has been done, either in Washington or Detroit:

-- Seven years after the introduction of the Ford Explorer set off a surge in
sales of sport utility vehicles, federal regulators have not performed a crash
test to determine what happens when these vehicles and pickups of similar design
hit a car. Such tests could be a first step toward requiring automakers to make
light trucks less dangerous to other vehicles.

-- Most of the federal money designated to study crashes between different sizes
of vehicles has been spent instead on air-bag safety studies in each of the last
two fiscal years. This was because of an outcry over reports that 82 children and
short adults have been killed by the devices. Yet federal accident statistics
show that collisions between light trucks and cars now kill that many people in
cars each week.

-- Automakers in the United States have paid little attention to the problem.
Engineers at the automakers say they work mainly on protecting the occupants of
the vehicles they design and have no formal procedures for calculating and
reducing the risk to occupants of other vehicles.

-- The automakers play down the risk to people in cars posed by much heavier
pickups and sport utility vehicles. Yet in fighting federal regulations intended
to make new cars more fuel efficient, they have warned against building
lightweight cars because they would be much more dangerous in crashes with
vehicles already on the road.

-- American car makers have largely ignored how the design of a vehicle may
affect other vehicles in a crash, contending that it is weight difference, and
not design, that determines who lives and who dies in crashes. Yet research in
Britain has found -- and the top safety official for the American auto
manufacturers' trade group agrees -- that sport utility vehicles and pickups are
particularly deadly when they hit a car in the side because they ride higher off
the ground and are more likely to strike the occupant of the car in the head and
chest.

Crashes with light trucks, particularly pickups and sport utility vehicles, are
especially deadly for people riding in the small, fuel-efficient cars that have
been produced over the last quarter-century in an attempt to reduce gasoline
consumption and pollution. And pickups and sport utility vehicles pose an even
bigger threat for the extremely fuel-efficient, 2,000-pound family cars that
automakers say they will build early in the next century.

Highway safety groups have also largely ignored the issue, focusing on air bags,
fuel-tank safety and other concerns. Indeed, safety experts and automakers in
Europe, where there are many small cars, have been doing more about the dangers
of light trucks than their American counterparts, even though sport utility
vehicles and pickups are less common there.

Germany's equivalent of the American Automobile Association performed a crash
test in 1993 that involved a nearly head-on collision at 31 miles per hour
between a 2,400-pound Volkswagen Golf and a 4,800-pound Nissan sport utility
vehicle. The Nissan rode up over the Volkswagen's hood nearly to the base of the
Golf's windshield; the crash dummy in the Golf suffered head injuries that
measured 3,177 on a scale for which readings above 1,000 are considered fatal.
Partly in response to that test, Mercedes-Benz has designed its new sport utility
vehicle to reduce the damage to cars.

But it is the Big Three American car makers -- General Motors, Ford and Chrysler
-- that make 86 percent of the nation's light trucks and all of the biggest sport
utility vehicles. These vehicles are their most profitable models; Ford earns as
much as $14,000 on each of its biggest sport utility vehicles, the 5,200-pound
Expedition and the similar 5,600-pound Lincoln Navigator. In fact, the Big Three
earn their entire profit on light truck sales, barely breaking even on cars.

Of course, sport utility vehicles and pickups do not cause accidents; people do,
when they drink, speed or otherwise show poor judgment. Executives at Detroit
automakers are quick to point this out. They also note that light trucks are a
lot smaller than some other vehicles on the road, like tractor-trailers.

"Even if you're driving a tank down the road, you could always get hit by a
locomotive," said Robert Purcell, GM's director of advanced technology.

The automakers contend buyers need vehicles that ride high so they can drive off
paved roads. In fact, few buyers use light trucks this way. According to an
internal memorandum, the Big Three found in a joint 1995 study that only 13
percent of sport utility vehicles were driven off road, 18 percent of pickups and
no mini-vans.

Most of all, auto executives say they are simply building the vehicles that
Americans want. And the sales figures bear them out. Nearly 7 million vehicles or
44 percent of all autos sold last year -- were light trucks, compared with 16
percent in 1971. The fastest-growing sales are for the biggest light trucks;
almost 3 million of those sold last year weighed more than 4,000 pounds. Sales of
the biggest sport utility vehicles have quintupled in six years, while the
overall auto market has grown only 23 percent.

"It's a good formula for the customer, and that's what we're providing," said
Alexander Trotman, Ford's chairman.

Just as it is hard to prove that any one victim of lung cancer acquired it
through smoking, it is hard to prove in any specific crash that the people in the
car would have fared better if hit by another car instead of a light truck. And
just as the main evidence for the harm of cigarettes lies in studies of thousands
of smokers, the best evidence for the problems created by light trucks lies in
statistics on thousands of crashes.

More Americans (5,447 last year) now die in crashes involving a car and a light
truck than in crashes involving two cars (4,193), according to federal
statistics. This is the case even though there are twice as many cars as light
trucks on the road and even though car-to-car collisions remain more common than
car-to-light-truck collisions. And for every person who dies in a light truck
that collides with a car, four people die in cars hit by light trucks.

Pickups and sport utility vehicles are becoming a lot heavier, and potentially
more deadly, as more buyers choose more powerful engines and amenities like
air-conditioning and plusher interiors. The latest Suburbans, for example, are a
half-ton heavier than the 1985 model that hit the Hassan family's Concorde. The
extra weight can make a bad crash worse.

Take a collision between a 2,900-pound Honda Accord and a 6,000-pound Chevrolet
Suburban. The Accord driver would be at least 13 times as likely to be killed as
the Suburban driver, based on a formula calculated for crashes by Leonard Evans,
a top safety researcher at GM. The formula was based on car-to-car crashes and
may understate the danger of a crash with a light truck.

One big insurer, the Progressive Corp. in Cleveland, has already raised liability
premiums for sport utility vehicles and large pickup trucks after an analysis
determined that medical bills for people hit by these vehicles were unusually
high. Other insurers are considering similar moves.

Police investigators who handle traffic accidents do not need such statistics to
convince them of the dangers of light trucks. They say that many of the worst
crashes they see these days, with deaths and especially serious injuries, occur
in collisions between light trucks and cars.

While mini-vans are classified by the government as light trucks, experts say
they are less deadly because they tend to weigh less than other light trucks,
ride closer to the ground and have frames that are less damaging in crashes.
Indeed, even a mini-van can fare poorly in collisions with other light trucks.
Cynthia S. Wellons of Hampton, Ga., was driving a 3,200-pound Dodge Caravan
mini-van last June when the driver of a 4,500-pound Chevrolet Blazer coming the
opposite way had a coughing fit and, police say, crossed the center line.

The Blazer, with its high bumper and frame, ran up on the mini-van's hood,
crushing the engine, dashboard and steering wheel onto Ms. Wellons, who was
wearing a seat belt but was killed. The Blazer's driver, Richard D. Thornton,
suffered a bruised heart and lung and was released after a night in the hospital.

"If I'd been in a smaller vehicle and they were in the same, they probably would
be better, but I'd be dead," Thornton said, adding that he hoped to buy another
sport utility vehicle.

In this crash and in the one that killed Hassan on Long Island, the victims might
have died even if hit by a car. Both crashes may have involved some driver error.
The driver of the Suburban who hit the Hassans, Anthony Montouri, has been
charged with driving under the influence of alcohol; he has denied any
wrongdoing.

But in each case, accident investigators concluded that the accidents would have
been less severe if only cars had been involved. The Suburban that hit the
Hassans' Concorde was "up much higher than if it were a car, and that means more
intrusion into the vehicle," said Gary T. Ferrucci, a Nassau County, N.Y.,
accident investigator.

For two decades the government has tested cars for how well they protect
occupants in crashes and then rated them according to the results. Reprinted by
car-buying guides and cited in automotive advertising, these ratings influence
the buying decisions of millions of Americans.

But given the proliferation of sport utility vehicles and pickups, the crash test
results seem increasingly irrelevant.

The tests were created in the 1970s, when light trucks were mainly pickups for
commercial and agricultural use and accounted for only a sixth of the automakers'
sales, compared with nearly half now. The tests require family vehicles to
protect occupants from death when crashed at 30 mph into a concrete barrier. The
government gives safety ratings of one to five stars based on separate
concrete-barrier tests at 35 mph, supplemented more recently by side-impact tests
that involve slamming a 3,015-pound sled against the vehicle.

But hurling a car into a concrete barrier is equivalent only to crashing it into
another car of the same weight. Indeed, the government attaches a little-known
footnote: The ratings are valid only for collisions with vehicles within 500
pounds of the same weight. So, while the 2,300-pound Honda Civic won four stars
for the safety of the driver and five stars for the safety of the front
passenger, it is really no match for the 5,600-pound Lincoln Navigator, a sport
utility vehicle that has the same ratings.

Some safety experts think another caveat is needed: that the ratings may not hold
true for collisions with higher vehicles that may override the bumpers and other
protective features of a car. When a car runs into a concrete barrier, the impact
always occurs precisely on the bumper, which tends to be in front of the
vehicle's strongest parts. But while car bumpers are required to withstand
impacts at a height of 16 to 20 inches off the ground, light truck bumpers are
not regulated and often extend much higher.

Installing four-wheel-drive -- twice as common now as a decade ago -- raises a
vehicle's underbody by two or three more inches. While many manufacturers try to
make sure that the bottom edge of their light truck bumpers extends below 20
inches, safety experts at insurers and elsewhere say this does not do much good.

"If you get a frontal collision, the sport utility vehicle bumper will tend to go
over the hood of the car. That's bad," said Charles R. Baker, a top Honda
engineer.

New research in Britain suggests that height differences could be particularly
important when sport utility vehicles and pickups hit cars in the side. Side
impacts account for nearly a third of all car-occupant deaths each year. Yet
federal tests in the United States only measure a car or light truck's ability to
withstand being hit in the side by the equivalent of a midsize sedan.

The 3,015-pound sled used for the side-impact test has a bumper with a lower edge
only 13 inches off the ground and a top edge 21 inches high. The lower edge of
the test sled is designed to reflect the fact that most vehicles brake before
hitting a car in the side, so their bumpers are a little lower than usual. But
the low edge also means that the test sled hits not only the car door, which is
relatively weak, but also the side of the car's underbody, its sturdiest part,
typically 15 inches off the ground.

Police calculate that the Suburban that hit the Hassans' Concorde passed entirely
over the car's door sills, with the main blow to the Concorde coming 24 inches
off the ground. Similarly, the Transport Research Laboratory, a safety research
group recently sold by the British government, crashed a 3,800-pound Range Rover
into the side of a 2,200-pound Ford Escort at 18 mph last year and found no
contact with the sill at all.

Barry Felrice, the top safety official at the American Automobile Manufacturers
Association, acknowledges that because sport utility vehicles and pickups ride
higher above the road than cars, their side-impact collisions with cars tend to
be more severe. "You're likely to be hit in the parts of the body that are more
prone to injury," he said, "like the chest or the head."

Some recent government studies support the concerns about light trucks and the
adequacy of the current crash tests. The policy planning staff at the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for instance, issued statistical studies
this summer concluding that serious injuries could be reduced if light trucks
weighed less. And two of the agency's senior researchers did a little-noticed
study early last year in which they concluded that current crash tests are
inadequate when the nation's vehicles are increasingly split between low-slung
cars and high-riding light trucks.

"The effect of this tremendous degree of fleet incompatibility is not measured
directly by frontal-barrier crash tests and will be the focus of future
research," concluded the study's authors, William T. Hollowell and Hampton C.
Gabler.

Largely missing from research on the dangers light trucks pose to cars are crash
tests and studies by universities and private companies. With a staff of fewer
than 700 people and a budget that has shrunk by 19 percent since 1980 after
inflation, the safety agency relies heavily on outsiders for statistical research
and entirely on outside companies for crash tests. But the $800,000 annual budget
for such outside work on crashes between cars and light trucks has been spent
almost entirely on air-bag research for two years.

This budget will be replenished on Oct. 1. It will pay for two to five crash
tests this winter, provided the money is not transferred again to air-bag
studies.

Philip Recht, the deputy administrator of the safety agency, defended its
spending decisions, saying that federal officials had given more attention to
crashes between light trucks and cars over the last several years and would step
up their research.

Yet the tests tentatively planned for this winter will not provide the basis for
any rule changes, said a federal official who insisted on anonymity, adding,
"That's just enough to start providing more questions."

Detroit has also paid little attention to the size mismatch among vehicles --
unless it served the automakers' purposes in resisting fuel-economy rules.

In the late 1970s, the Ford Motor Co. developed a computer program to predict
what would happen when a new car or light truck struck other vehicles. But when
federal regulators chose to focus on air bags and other safety gear instead of
demanding so-called compatible designs, Ford cut back its efforts. Other
automakers never even started comparable efforts.

Chris Magee, Ford's director of vehicle systems engineering, who worked on the
program, said crash compatibility was not an active part of design. "We first of
all worry in most cases about the occupants of the vehicle we're selling," he
said. "As far as vehicle mix aspects, we might look at them, but there's not
really any processes or procedures for doing anything."

Some auto officials contend that the shift to light trucks might actually be
saving lives over all. Indeed, heavier vehicles tend to protect occupants better
than lighter vehicles not only when a driver crashes into another vehicle but
also into a tree or some other object, they point out.

Yet insurance industry crash statistics offer little support for this optimism.
People in pickups and all but the largest sport utility vehicles actually are
killed at a higher rate in single-vehicle accidents than people in cars. This is
partly because these vehicles are more often driven by men, who have more
accidents than women, but also because the vehicles' high centers of gravity make
it easier to roll over than cars.

As for whether the lower death rates in light trucks more than offset the higher
death rates in cars, no one yet knows.

Worried about a possible backlash from drivers of small cars, Mercedes-Benz has
gone to great lengths to reduce the threat that its new 4,200-pound, $34,445
sport utility vehicle poses to cars. Below and behind the bumper is a hollow,
horizontal tube that amounts to a second bumper at the same height as a car
underbody. The tube and two hollow steel boxes behind it are designed to crush
during crashes, absorbing energy that might otherwise be transmitted to either
vehicle's occupants. Mercedes crashed the vehicle at 31 mph into a Mercedes so
small it is not sold in the United States; a crash dummy in the car "survived."

Officials at Volvo, long known for safe design, acknowledge that their cars are
no match for a large sport utility vehicle. They are moving to install side air
bags to provide more protection to the head and chest. Ford plans to announce a
similar move soon. The only Big Three car with side air bags now is the Cadillac
DeVille.

The auto industry has split in recent months over whether the biggest sport
utility vehicles and pickups should be made with frames that bend more on impact,
absorbing energy in a crash. But less stiff frames could be less safe for the
people in the trucks.

The traffic safety agency has the authority to require crash tests in which the
automaker must prove any new car or light truck does not inflict excessive damage
on existing vehicles during collisions. If the agency did require such proof,
automakers would have to choose among reducing the weight, height or stiffness of
the deadliest models. But with research barely begun, regulators say they are not
in a position even to draft such a rule.

Some federal safety officials hope that Congress will allow the minimum standard
for fuel economy in light trucks to be raised. Light trucks have ballooned in
size and weight because each automaker needs only to sell light trucks with an
average fuel economy of 20.7 miles a gallon, compared with the car target of 27.5
miles a gallon.

Yet Congress, after lobbying from American automakers, has barred the traffic
safety agency for the last two years from spending any money even to study
whether fuel-economy standards should be raised.

For now, the likelihood is that sport utility vehicles will become more popular,
and car occupants will account for an ever more disproportionate share of
fatalities. This bothers some safety experts.

"If you can afford to buy this $36,000 sport utility vehicle, then you have a
better chance of surviving than this poor guy down the street who can only afford
to buy a car," said John Taylor, a professional accident investigator in White
Haven, Pa.

Yet after seeing too many car occupants killed or crippled by light trucks, even
Taylor now drives a 4,200-pound Ford Explorer. "Sport utility vehicles are
great," he said, "for the guy that owns them."