Some interesting statistics here:

Does anybody remember the column in Car and Driver magazine a couple months back... one of their staff did a bit of research about the types of vehicles most likely to be involved in rollover accidents because the NHTSA in its infinite wisdom had determined that if you put vehicles on a tilt-table and tip them, the ones with the higher center of gravity (i.e., SUVs) fell over first. God only knows how many millions of dollars they spent coming up with this incredible scientific breakthrough.

So then C&D magazine went to the "real world" and started examining actual accident statistics. And guess what? SUVs were less likely to be involved in rollover accidents than Corvettes, on an accident/mileage basis.

Then they looked further--- and found that two door vehicles of any kind were more likely to have rollover accidents than four door vehicles -- even when the two-door/four-door vehicles were variants on the same basic model. And station wagon variants of the same car were enormously less likely to have rollovers.

The conclusion reached by the magazine was that the driver was a far more important determining factor than the type of vehicle -- that people who bought two door cars drove more agressively than drivers of 4-door vehicles.

But did that stop the NHTSA from promoting SUVs as dangerous and more likely to be involved in a rollover? Of course not. You can always lie with statistics, and the insurance companies are fully cognizant of this.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"