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Sport utility vehicle backlash is coming
In the escalating highway arms race, many drivers are moving to a rather effective weapon called the sport utility vehicle. In an accident, the sport utility vehicle (SUV) does great harm to the passengers in an ordinary car. Insurers have gotten wind of this fact. Thus, they have begun to charge SUV owners higher rates to reflect the increased claims won by the occupants (or their survivors) of the sedans they level. Sometimes referred as the "suburban assault vehicle," an SUV is (1) big (over two times heavier than a midsized sedan); (2) expensive (costs twice as much); and (3) a gas hog (gets only 11 to 18 miles to the gallon). Examples include the Ford Explorer, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Toyota 4Runner.
To its growing legion of critics, the SUV has become an icon for American excess in the '90s. One model advertises enough cup holders for 14 drinks. Commercials show the monsters scaling mountains, but few actually leave the pavement or climb anything steeper than a parking garage ramp.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are pulling their hair out. The SUV cancels years of progress during which Detroit made sharp reductions in the fuel thirst of its products.
Equally painful, SUV buyers are often socially conscious Baby Boomers. Having agonized over whether to take paper or plastic at the supermarket, the Boomers then jump into their 18-foot Chevrolet Suburbans to drive two miles home. SUVs are slyly marketed as outdoorsy and sturdy, providing some social cover for the Yuppie suffering another bout of "affluenza."
Indeed, one of the highest concentrations of SUV ownership is in the clean-living environs of the American Northwest. You can see battalions of SUVs muscling their way, inch by inch, through Seattle's rush hour. And there is no little irony in Ford's decision to name a model of the Expedition, which gets 13 miles to the gallon, after Eddie Bauer, the Seattle-based purveyor of rugged country gear.
Most irksome, of course, remains the SUVs' dangerous design -- dangerous to others, that is. They are built high so that their bumpers go right over the hoods of lower automobiles. In an accident, the SUVs' stiff frames crumple the cars while suffering minimal damage themselves.
The Highway Loss Data Institute has found that property damage liability costs from collisions involving large sport vehicles are 72 percent higher than for the average car. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is now collecting figures on the death tolls in SUV accidents.
Many suspect that SUV drivers, feeling invulnerable in their protective hide, take chances with the lives of others. The SUV driver knows that if he plows into another car, he at least, will be safe. Many such drivers therefore tailgate on icy highways and otherwise play the bully on the road. (For the record, four-wheel drive does not enhance a vehicle's ability to brake and actually makes steering more difficult.)
In his "California Driving -- A Survival Guide," published on the Internet, Hamish Reid refers to SUV drivers as "an increasing plague" on urban roads: "There's something about an SUV that seems to give some drivers the impression that they're actually back in the open plains or the jungle -- and that (as one correspondent put it) the rest of us slower, smaller objects are just so many logs, boulders or ruts to be driven over."
The decision of insurers to raise rates on SUVs marks the biggest change in liability coverage since the introduction of no-fault laws a quarter century ago. In the next few years, SUV drivers may pay up to $700 more a year for liability insurance, which covers property damage and injury to others. Car owners may see a reduction of up to $350.
State Farm is one insurer reluctant to adjust rates by model. Its reasoning will not comfort automobile drivers. A State Farm actuary notes that sport utility vehicles may actually save insurers money because they are more likely to kill the occupants of the automobile than to maim them. Serious injuries tend to yield bigger settlements than death.
Resentments of sport utility vehicles may grow into a backlash. That the insurers are starting to charge SUV owners for the privilege of flattening sedans may be chalked up as one small victory for the little guy in the ordinary car.
Froma Harrop is a columnist for the Providence Journal-Bulletin.
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