Vilified as big and dangerous, sports utility vehicles are not the worst threats to life and limb on the road. It is the sports car that kills the most people per crash, and crashes the most often.
SUVs get picked on for good reason: their blunt, chest-high bodywork can crush pedestrians in collisions, and their high centre of gravity increases the risk of rolling. A study in 2005 also showed that while SUV drivers run the same risk of injury as other drivers, they are more likely to injure others (.
Despite this, driving a sports car still poses the greatest overall risk of injury. Michael Keall of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and Stuart Newstead of Otago University in Wellington, New Zealand, analysed data on 17,000 crashes involving vans, sports cars, saloon cars and SUVs that occurred in New Zealand in 2005 and 2006. They didn鈥檛 tease apart whether it was drivers or others that got hurt more, but they found that the chance of injury to vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists overall was 40 per cent higher in a crash involving a sports car than in one involving an SUV. They also found that sports cars were more likely to crash than other vehicles ().
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The pair speculate that the ability to drive and accelerate faster in a sports car is to blame, but Duncan Vernon of the UK鈥檚 Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents reckons it is a red herring. He says the types of cars people buy reflect their attitudes to driving: 鈥淭he focus should be on reducing dangerous driving behaviour in all types of car.鈥�
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