CNN Money, "Behind the rollover ratings: NHTSA's SUV rating system doesn't say much"

If you're shopping for a new sport utility vehicle and you want to buy one that's less likely to roll over in a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's five-star rollover resistance ratings can be helpful. Unfortunately, they can also be very confusing. NHTSA's five-star rollover resistance rating system has, for practical purposes, become a two-star system. Of the 28 SUVs rated so far, all but one have either three or four stars, and 20 of those are in the three-star category.

Five stars means a vehicle has less than a 10 percent chance of rolling over in a single-vehicle crash. No SUV rated so far has attained such a rating. Since all SUVs fall into such a narrow range, does that mean they're all about the same? Not really. But it would be helpful to have more information about data behind the ratings and how they are calculated. Unfortunately, the underlying data that NHTSA uses to assign rollover star ratings -- which could help you make a more informed judgment -- is difficult to find if you don't know just where to look. And there's no way, using NHTSA's SaferCar.gov site, to easily compare one SUV's stability factors to another's. Rollover wrecks accounted for 3 percent of crashes in 2002, but 33 percent of fatalities, according to NHTSA.