SUVs Not Safer than Cars for Children, New Research Shows

New research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia shows that children riding in SUVs have similar injury risks to children who ride in passenger cars, according to a post yesterday from Green Car Congress.

The study, published yesterday in the journal Pediatrics, found that an SUV’s increased risk of rolling over during a crash offset the safety benefits associated with larger, heavier-weight vehicles.

Dennis Durbin, MD, co-author of the report explains:

"SUVs are becoming more popular as family vehicles because they can accommodate multiple child safety seats and their larger size may lead parents to believe SUVs are safer than passenger cars. However, people who use an SUV as their family vehicle should know that SUVs do not provide superior protection for child occupants and that age- and size-appropriate restraints and rear seating for children under 13 years are critically important because of the increased risk of a rollover crash."

The study, part of an on-going research collaboration of Children’s Hospital and State Farm Insurance Companies, examined crashes reported to State Farm involving 3,933 child occupants between the ages of 0 and 15 years who were in either SUVs or passenger cars that were model year 1998 or newer, according to GCC.

Rollover contributes significantly to risk of injury in both vehicle types but occurred twice as frequently in SUVs, the report shows. Children involved in rollover crashes were also three times more likely to be injured than children in non-rollovers.

Children who were not properly restrained in a car seat, booster seat or seatbelt during an SUV rollover were at a 25-fold greater risk for injury as compared to appropriately restrained children. Nearly half of the unrestrained children in these crashes (41%) suffered a serious injury versus only three percent of appropriately restrained children in SUVs. Overall, injury risk for appropriately restrained children in passenger cars is less than 2%.

In the 2005 Partners for Child Passenger Safety Fact and Trend Report, Children’s Hospital reported that SUVs in child-involved State Farm crashes increased from 15% in 1999 to 26% in 2004, while the percentage of passenger cars decreased from a high of 54% in 1999 to 43% in 2004. There was no or little growth in the percentage of minivans in the study population - 24 percent in 2004.

According to GCC, previous Children’s Hospital research has shown that, within each vehicle classification, larger heavier vehicles are generally safer. For instance, of all passenger car classifications, large and luxury cars feature lower child injury risk than mid-size or small passenger cars. Among SUVs, mid-size and small SUVs had similar injury risks, which were two times higher than large SUVs.

Compact extended-cab pickup trucks present a unique risk to children - child occupants in the rear row of compact extended cab pick-ups face a five-fold increased risk of injury in a crash as compared to rear-seated children in all other vehicle types.

Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS) is a research collaboration between the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm. As of February 2005, PCPS has created a database containing information on more than 377,000 crashes involving more than 557,000 children from birth through age 15 years. It is the world’s largest study of children in motor vehicle crashes.


This doesn't come as striking news to me but may to many parents out there who think they are protecting their children by buying SUVs. Folks, if you really want a safe family car, buy an old Volvo wagon - built like tanks and made to last, you won't have to worry about roll-overs in a 1984 Volvo!