I read this article a couple of months ago in the New Yorker and was happy to find that it was online, so I could share it with those I love, i.e. You. (awww)
Anyway, it’s a really interesting article about the false security of driving an SUV. People say they drive these behemoths because they feel safer in them. Well, guess what, they’re not.
In a thirty-five-m.p.h. crash test, for instance, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade – the G.M. counterpart to the Lincoln Navigator – has a sixteen-per-cent chance of a life-threatening head injury, a twenty-per-cent chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a leg injury. The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan – a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame – are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent.