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Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Rolling over on safety: the new evidence
If your vehicle crashes and rolls over, you should be able to walk away from the crash: the forces in a rollover crash are lower in degree than the forces from other collisions. What should be the case in theory is not, however, the case in fact. Even though rollovers amount to only three percent of all vehicle crashes, rollovers account for one third of all crash fatalities — 10,000 deaths every year. The gap suggests that poor vehicle design makes rollovers more dangerous. Among the significant design problems is that car roofs get crushed too easily in rollovers and cave in on top of the vehicle occupants.

Roof crush is a major cause of death and injury from rollover crashes. Current regulatory standards are so flimsy that they allow car roofs to be dangerously weak, especially in a time of increased consumer interest in SUVs and other light trucks. Even though we have long known that an improved protective standard to strengthen car roofs is feasible and inexpensive, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has failed to serve the public with an improved standard.

Now, Public Citizen has revealed more evidence that NHTSA and the automakers can and must do more to strengthen roofs in rollover crashes. A groundbreaking study, “Roof Crush as a Source of Injury in Rollover Crashes,” proves the link between roof crush and serious injury in rollovers and disproves industry’s arguments against the role of roof crush — by using industry’s own testing data, no less. Additionally, industry documents (including a video of the Volvo XC-90’s dynamic rollover tests) reveal that at least one automaker has considered the possibility of preventing serious injury in rollover crashes with a comprehensive safety system, including safety belt pretensioners, roof strength reinforcements, and effective side-impact airbag restraint systems and window safety glass.