Criticism of SUVs
s have been criticized for a variety of environmental and automotive safety reasons. The rise in production and marketing of SUVs in the 2010s and 2020s by auto manufacturers has resulted in over 80% of all new car sales in the United States being SUVs or light trucks by October 2021. This rise in SUV sales has also spilled over into the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has generated calls from car safety advocates to downsize in favor of models such as sedans, wagons, and compacts.
SUVs generally have poorer fuel efficiency and require more resources to manufacture than smaller vehicles, thus contributing more to climate change and environmental degradation. Their higher center of gravity significantly increases their risk of rollovers. Their larger mass increases their momentum, which results in more damage to other road users in collisions. Their higher front-end profile reduces visibility and makes them at least twice as likely to kill pedestrians they hit. Large SUVs have been shown to have longer braking distances in the dry than traditional passenger cars and small SUVs. Additionally, the psychological sense of security they provide influences drivers to drive less cautiously or rely on their car for their perceived safety, rather than their own driving.
Safety
SUVs are generally safer to their occupants and more dangerous to other road users than mid-size cars. A 2021 study by the University of Illinois Springfield showed, for example, that SUVs are 8-times more likely to kill children in an accident than passenger cars, and multiple times more lethal to adult pedestrians and cyclists.When it comes to mortality for vehicle occupants, four-door minicars have a death rate of 82, compared with 46 for very large four-doors. This survey reflects the effects of both vehicle design and driving behaviour. Drivers of SUVs, minivans, and large cars may drive differently from the drivers of small or mid-size cars, and this may affect the survey result.
Rollover
A high center of gravity makes a vehicle more prone to rollover accidents than lower vehicles, especially if the vehicle leaves the road, or if the driver makes a sharp turn during an emergency maneuver. Figures from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that most passenger cars have about a 10% chance of rollover if involved in a single-vehicle crash, while SUVs have between 14% and 23% Ford Edge to a high of 23% for the front-wheel-drive. Many modern SUVs are equipped with electronic stability control to prevent rollovers on flat surfaces, but 95% of rollovers are "tripped", meaning that the vehicle strikes something low, such as a curb or shallow ditch, causing it to tip over.According to NHTSA data, early SUVs were at a disadvantage in single-vehicle accidents, which involve 43% of fatal accidents, with more than double the chance of rolling over. This risk related closely to overall US motor vehicle fatality data, showing that SUVs and pickups generally had a higher fatality rate than cars of the same manufacturer.
According to Consumer Reports, as of 2009, SUV rollover safety had improved to the extent that on average there were slightly fewer driver fatalities per million vehicles, due to rollovers, in SUVs as opposed to cars. By 2011 the IIHS reported that "drivers of today's SUVs are among the least likely to die in a crash".
Poor handling
Vehicles that are larger and heavier in size like SUVs require large amounts of braking power and more powerful steering assists to aid in turning the wheels more quickly. Because of this, the reaction of an SUV to sudden braking and steering maneuvers will be very different to drivers who are more accustomed to lighter vehicles. This is due to the combination of a vastly higher center of gravity and excessive weight severely affecting the cornering ability of SUVs with rollovers much more likely than cars or minivans, even at low speeds.Construction
Heavier-duty SUVs are typically designed with a truck-style chassis with separate body, while lighter-duty models are more similar to cars, which are typically built with a unitary construction. Originally designed and built to be work vehicles using a truck chassis, SUVs were not comprehensively redesigned to be safely used as passenger vehicles. The British television programme Fifth Gear staged a crash between a first generation Land Rover Discovery with a separate chassis and body, and a modern Renault Espace IV with monocoque design. The older SUV offered less protection for occupants than the modern multi-purpose vehicle with unitary construction. In some SUV fatalities involving truck-based construction, lawsuits against the automakers "were settled quietly and confidentially, without any public scrutiny of the results—or the underlying problems with SUV design", thus hiding the danger of vehicles such as the Ford Bronco and Explorer compared to regular passenger cars.Risk to other road users
Because of greater height and weight and rigid frames, it is contended by Malcolm Gladwell, writing in The New Yorker magazine, that SUVs can affect traffic safety. This height and weight, while potentially giving an advantage to occupants of the vehicle, may pose a risk to drivers of smaller vehicles in multi-vehicle accidents, particularly side impacts.The initial tests of the Ford Excursion were "horrifying" for its ability to vault over the hood of a Ford Taurus. The big SUV was modified to include a type of blocker bar suggested by the French transportation ministry in 1971, a kind of under-vehicle roll bar designed to keep the large Ford Excursion from rolling over cars that were hit by it. The problem is "impact incompatibility", where the "hard points" of the end of chassis rails of SUVs are higher than the "hard points" of cars, causing the SUV to override the engine compartment and crumple zone of the car. There have been few regulations covering designs of SUVs to address the safety issue. The heavy weight is a risk factor with very large passenger cars, not only with SUVs. The typically higher SUV bumper heights and those built using stiff truck-based frames, also increases risks in crashes with passenger cars. The Mercedes ML320 was designed with bumpers at the same height as required for passenger cars.
In parts of Europe, effective 2006, the fitting of metal bullbars, also known as grille guards, brush guards, and push bars, to vehicles such as 4x4s and SUVs are only legal if pedestrian-safe plastic bars and grilles are used. Bullbars are often used in Australia, South Africa, and parts of the United States to protect the vehicle from being disabled should it collide with wildlife.
Safety improvements during the 2010s to the present led automobile manufacturers to make design changes to align the energy-absorbing structures of SUVs with those of cars. As a result, car occupants were only 28 percent more likely to die in collisions with SUVs than with cars between 2013 and 2016, compared with 59 percent between 2009 and 2012, according to the IIHS.
Visibility and backover deaths
Larger vehicles can create visibility problems for other road users by obscuring their view of traffic lights, signs, and other vehicles on the road, plus the road itself. Depending on the design, drivers of some larger vehicles may themselves suffer from poor visibility to the side and the rear. Poor rearward vision has led to many "backover deaths" where vehicles have run over small children when backing out of driveways. The problem of backover deaths has become so widespread that reversing cameras are being installed on some vehicles to improve rearward vision.While SUVs are often perceived as having inferior rearward vision compared with regular passenger cars, this is not supported by controlled testing which found poor rearward visibility was not limited to any single vehicle class. Australia's NRMA motoring organisation found that regular passenger cars commonly provided inferior rearward vision compared to SUVs, both because of the prevalence of reversing cameras on modern SUVs and the shape of many popular passenger cars, with their high rear window lines and boots obstructing rearward vision. In NRMA testing, two out of 42 SUVs and 29 out of 163 regular cars had the worst rating. Of the vehicles that received a perfect 0-metre blind spot rating, 11 out of 42 were SUVs and eight out of 163 were regular passenger cars. All of the "perfect score" vehicles had OEM reversing cameras.
Wide bodies in narrow lanes
The wider bodies of larger vehicles mean they occupy a greater percentage of road lanes. This is particularly noticeable on the narrow roads sometimes found in dense urban areas or rural areas in Europe. Wider vehicles may also have difficulty fitting in some parking spaces and encroach further into traffic lanes when parked alongside the road.Psychology
SUV safety concerns are affected by a perception among some consumers that SUVs are safer for their drivers than standard cars, and that they need not take basic precautions as if they were inside a "defensive capsule". According to G. C. Rapaille, a psychological consultant to automakers, many consumers feel safer in SUVs simply because their ride height makes " higher and dominate and look down . That you can look down is psychologically a very powerful notion." This and the height and weight of SUVs may lead to consumers' perception of safety.Gladwell also noted that SUV popularity is also a sign that people began to shift automobile safety focus from active to passive, to the point that in the US potential SUV buyers will give up an extra of braking distance because they believe they are helpless to avoid a tractor-trailer hit on any vehicle. The four-wheel drive option available to SUVs reinforced the passive safety notion. To support Gladwell's argument, he mentioned that automotive engineer David Champion noted that in his previous driving experience with Range Rover, his vehicle slid across a four-lane road because he did not perceive the slipping that others had experienced. Gladwell concluded that when a driver feels unsafe when driving a vehicle, it makes the vehicle safer. When a driver feels safe when driving, the vehicle becomes less safe.
Stephen Popiel, a vice president of Millward Brown Goldfarb automotive market-research company, noted that for most automotive consumers, safety has to do with the notion that they are not in complete control. Gladwell argued that many "accidents" are not outside driver's control, such as drunk driving, wearing seat belts, and the driver's age and experience.