Vehicle Safety News

Los Angeles Times, "SUVs Improve in Rollover Ratings; Regulators credit the popularity of 'crossover' vehicles, which have lower centers of gravity"

Car manufacturers are doing a better job designing sport utility vehicles to resist rollover accidents, U.S. safety regulators said Wednesday. Popular SUVs have earned increasingly high marks in government rollover tests over the last four years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

The number of SUVs with a four-star rollover rating out of a possible five stars grew from just one in 2001 to 24 in newly released rollover test results for 2005 model year vehicles, the safety administration said. Rollovers represent only a small fraction of crashes on U.S. roads but a quarter of all traffic deaths. The safety administration has projected that 10,296 Americans were killed in rollover accidents in 2004. Of those, 2,821 were in SUVs, an increase of nearly 7% over the previous year, according to the agency.