Government rates SUVs for rollover chance

©Washington Post

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 10, 2001

WASHINGTON -- The federal government Tuesday rated 42 model year 2001 sport utility vehicles, passenger cars and light trucks, telling consumers for the first time how likely the vehicles are to roll over if they hit a curb, a ditch, or climb onto a soft shoulder on the road.

Using a rating system based on five stars -- with five being the superior rating -- the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration used a mathematical formula to measure how top-heavy a vehicle is in a single-vehicle crash.

The worst ratings -- one star -- went to General Motors' Blazer and Jimmy sport utility vehicles, while the best -- five stars -- went to the Honda Accord.

Of paramount interest to consumers are the SUVs that the government rated, especially the Ford Motor Co. Explorer, which received a two-star rating.

Interest is high in the Explorer's rating because the vehicle has been subject to a torrent of bad publicity and questions about its propensity to roll over since the government opened an investigation last spring into 148 deaths on Bridgestone/Firestone Co. tires mounted on Explorers.

The majority of those accidents involved tread separation of the tires, which resulted in the vehicle rolling over.

Ford spokeswoman Sara Tatchio said the Explorer "is an extremely safe vehicle and has strong safety performance for its entire 10 years of existence."

GM said the NHTSA ratings "do not accurately reflect resistance to rollover," according to Philip Horton, a GM safety engineer.

Horton said that when the company looked at actual rollover rates in accidents in six states involving the Chevrolet Blazer and GMC Jimmy, it got different results that would have translated into a three-star rating for the four-wheel-drive vehicle and two stars for the two-wheel drive. "The Blazer is not being accurately characterized," Horton said.

NHTSA said there are some 10,000 fatalities in rollover crashes annually, and 2,700 injuries. Because of their high center of gravity, SUVs are more likely to roll over in certain kinds of accidents: 60 percent of drivers and passengers in SUVs died in 1999 when their vehicles rolled over, compared with 23 percent for occupants of cars.

Automakers do not like the basis of the rating system, saying it will mislead consumers and offer them little information that will allow them to distinguish among models.

"A vehicle's likelihood to roll over is influenced by more than two dozen factors, and cannot be reduced to a simple star-rating system based just on the two measurements that NHTSA plans to make on a stationary vehicle," said the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Consumer groups don't think the star system will be much help to consumers, either.

"It's a very coarse measurement. We think NHTSA should do better and can do better for consumers," said Sally Greenberg, senior product safety counsel for Consumers Union.

NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson said the ratings tell consumers a great deal about what to expect under certain circumstances.

"We compared them with 200,000 crashes in the real world, and our scores correlate," Tyson said.

The formula NHTSA used assesses the track width of the vehicle in proportion to its center of gravity. The higher the vehicle and narrower the wheelbase, the more likely it is to roll over.

The agency assigned a rollover risk of greater than 40 percent to one star, and less than 10 percent to five.

Rollover ratings

Here are other 2001 vehicles rated by the Transportation Department. Another 50 or so are expected to be rated by April. Five is the highest rating.

Passenger Cars

Vehicle Rating

Ford Focus 4dr 4

Chev. Cavalier 4dr 4

Honda Civic 4dr 4

Pontiac Sunfire 4dr 4

Volkswagen Jetta 4dr 4

Chev. Impala 4dr 4

Ford Taurus 4dr 4

Honda Accord 4dr 5

Mercury Sable 4dr 4

Light Trucks

Chevrolet S-10 4X2 3

Chevrolet S-10 4X4 3

Chev.Silver.ExCab 4X2 4

Chev.Silver.ExCab 4X4 3

Ford F-150 4X4 3

GMC Sierra ExCab 4X2 4

GMC Sierra ExCab 4X4 3

GMC Sonoma 4X2 3

GMC Sonoma 4X4 3

Isuzu Hombre 4X2 3

Isuzu Hombre 4X4 3

Vans

Honda Odyssey 4

Mazda MPV 3

Chrysler PT Cruiser 4

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