The SUV: A truck in disguise

How did that happen? How did the public come to believe that one of the most dangerous vehicles on American roads was the safest?  A little history helps. Auto makers use a truck frame for the SUV.  That makes it cheaper to build than a passenger car because trucks don’t have to meet the same safety standards. They lack the unit-body construction of a car with its reinforced frame and built-in crumple zones that absorb the impact of a crash. Auto makers just bolted an extra row of seats to a truck frame and added doors to make the SUV, creating a “dressed-up truck” with a high price. The investigative story revealing this, and other little publicized features about the SUV, appeared in The New Yorker Magazine in 2004. The headline read “How The SUV Ran Over Automotive Safety.”

Deceiving looks hide deadly defects

The article revealed that automotive engineers knew that SUVs were not as safe as cars when the first models rolled off the assembly line in 1996. They were shocked that SUVS were an immediate hit with buyers focused on safety. Certainly, SUVs looked safe. And marketers capitalized heavily on that illusion.

Height, weight, luxury tempt drivers 

SUVs surround drivers with plenty of rubber and metal. They sit higher in traffic. But they take longer to stop than cars, especially on rain slick roads and in snowy conditions because their antilock brakes are designed to minimize their tendency to roll over. But when drivers swerve suddenly to avoid obstacles or collisions with other cars, especially at high speeds, SUVs tip over easily. Their relatively weak roofs don’t support their weight in rollover accidents, even in newer models. Roof crush inflicts catastrophic brain injuries on occupants or kills them outright.

SUV rollovers and traumatic brain injury  

When an SUV rolls over, and the top of the car hits occupants in the head, the force moves the brain back and forth inside the skull. Or, the skull fractures and injures the brain. Either way, traumatic brain injury is the result. It can alter personality permanently, changing the way a person thinks, acts, feels and moves. It can also affect bladder and bowel control, internal body temperature and blood pressure. The need for lifelong care in an institution or at home is a distinct possibility after these accidents if the victims survive. Their families will need the help of a personal injury lawyer to collect damages so that care is available for victims as long as they may live.  Whether victims survive rollovers or not, their families should be compensated for a vehicle that was misrepresented from the moment of manufacture.