NHTSA Releases New Rollover Ratings
For the first time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released specific rollover-possibility data last week that show how prone individual models of new cars and light-duty trucks are to roll over in an accident.
Instead of merely assigning a star rating to each model it tests, as it has done in the past, NHTSA released figures that allow consumers to compare rollover risk model by model. As expected, cars performed much better than SUVs or pickup trucks in the tests. But the new ratings also show wide differences among vehicles of the same type.
The new rollover data were released as part of NHTSAês new enhanced five-star rating system. The agency ranked only the 68 most popular 2004-model cars and trucks 36 SUVs, 20 cars, eight pickups, four minivans out of about 300 models on sale. Vehicles missing from the list could be tested next year.
This is a problem [rollovers] that continues to produce about a third of our occupant fatalities every year, even though they are less than 3 percent of our crashes, said Jeffrey W. Runge, administrator of the traffic safety agency. The new rankings information, he added, does arm the consumer with a little more sophisticated information.
Runge also pointed out that safety belts would prevent most rollover deaths. About 75 percent of those who die in rollovers are unbelted, and about 80 percent of those would live if belted, according to Runge.
The new rollover rankings, along with front and side impact test ratings, are available at the safety agency’s Web site, www.safercar.gov.
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