Why The SUV Is All The Rage

All the metal surrounding you in an SUV might help protect you in certain accidents, such as broadside collisions with a car. That's one reason SUVs generally have lower death rates than small cars. But that protection comes at a cost to the half of U.S. drivers who don't have trucks or SUVs. Because they are so much heavier and higher off the ground, SUVs can ride atop cars when they collide, crushing the smaller vehicles. Last week automakers and a safety group met in Washington to address this issue, known as "crash compatibility." It's a daunting problem: nhtsa research has shown that if a car rams another car on the driver side, the driver of the struck car is 6.6 times as likely to die as the driver of the torpedoing one. But if an SUV hits the car, call the undertaker: the driver of the car is 30 times as likely to be killed.

Many drivers intuit these odds, which is undoubtedly one reason for strong SUV sales. Says Abraxas Baker, 26, who manages a Dallas bar: "I have peace of mind knowing if I was in an accident, I'd have a better chance of walking away. Everyone in my family feels that way. We all drive one." It's hard not to see such attitudes as evidence that a highway arms race has begun. Asks Gregg Easterbrook in a recent New Republic piece on SUVs: "Can it be a coincidence that road rage started to become a national concern in the mid-1990s, just as these pharaonic contraptions began flooding the roads?" (Perhaps he's right, but Easterbrook hurts his argument when he suggests SUV drivers have "serious psychological problems.")

Consumer groups and auto executives may spar over the mixed safety profile of SUVs, but there's less argument about the vehicles' environmental impact. It's simple math: SUVs are heavier than cars, so they take more gas to go the same distance. And burning more gas releases more garbage into the air. According to the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists, 2001-model SUVs, pickups and minivans emitted 2.4 times as much smog-forming nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons as cars and 1.4 times as much tailpipe carbon dioxide (a global-warming gas) as cars. The Natural Resources Defense Council says Americans use 5 billion more gallons of gas a year than they would if the balance between cars and light trucks were the same as in 1975.

It's not only traditional liberals who are fretting about all this gas consumption and pollution. Even some evangelical Christians have joined the anti-SUV chorus. A group called the Evangelical Environmental Network, based in Wynnewood, Pa., has produced TV ads with a provocative tag line: "If we love our neighbor, and we cherish God's creation, maybe we should ask, 'What would Jesus drive?'" The late-night comics went berserk, but Evangelicals take seriously the idea that Christ should be at the center of daily decisions. Says the Rev. Richard Cizik, a conservative minister and registered Republican: "I'm not on an anti-SUV campaign. But we are for fuel efficiency and pollution reductions. If evangelical Christians cannot be for that, I think they're missing the full sense of how the Gospel touches every point of their lives."