Agressivity and SUVs

No, not aggressive driving. This is why (truck-based, not so-called “crossover”/car-based) SUVs and pickups are bad for everybody.

The term agressivity refers to…

The effects of vehicle model and driver behavior on risk,  Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 37, Issue 3, May 2005, Pages 479-494
doi:10.1016/j.aap.2004.08.002

We find that most car models are as safe to their drivers as most sport utility vehicles (SUVs); the increased risk of a rollover in a SUV roughly balances the higher risk for cars that collide with SUVs and pickup trucks. We find that SUVs and to a greater extent pickup trucks, impose much greater risks than cars on drivers of other vehicles; and these risks increase with increasing pickup size. The higher aggressivity of SUVs and pickups makes their combined risk higher than that of almost all cars. Effects of light truck design on their risk are revealed by the analysis of specific models: new unibody (or “crossover”) SUVs appear, in preliminary analysis, to have much lower risks than the most popular truck-based SUVs.

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