CARMAX, AUTOTRADER, or????

[wabmester]

I prefer serious metal.

Metal is good, but so is a low center of gravity.

Some stats from a recent NY Times article:

minivans: 2.76 deaths per billion miles driven
large cars: 3.3
SUVs > 5100lbs: 3.79
midsize cars: 5.26
midsize SUVs: 6.73

[cute fuzzy bunny]

That MIGHT be whats proved, or it might prove that people in SUV's think they're invulnerable and dont practice safe, defensive driving. Or it might mean that people who drive SUV's cant drive for ****.

I've experienced considerable exposure to the latter. It appears to me that driving skill, ability, and attention are inversely correlated to the size of the vehicle.

I drive a MONSTER "bad ass" truck. Don't get in my way!

John Galt

[Nords]

.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Nope, but if I were you I wouldnt believe any technology based studies.

That is unless you really WANT to. You know, feel a certain compulsion

By the way, feel no fear or discomfort with what I did. All our work bore out was some positive indicators towards buying some better, more functional, and longer lived stuff (admittedly for more money) than people probably would have bought on their own in the absence of any data. The "proof points" we created werent necessarily misleading. Its simply an area that is too nebulous to place absolute direction in. So we picked a few places we could muddle down into, made some nice graphs and charts, and gave people the ability to do what they probably wanted to do all along. Buy cooler toys. Instead of buying "in the middle" of our product line, thinking that was the "sweet spot", they bought a rung or two higher. I'll bet 95% of buyers felt better about the decision two years later...

Auto and driving studies are good ones though. They're the most easily disproven.

Most of them ignore 'per capita' allocation, quoting bulk numbers through decades with no mind to the fact that there are more drivers and cars every year. Many do extensive data mining. A lot of them ignore safety and engineering improvements to vehicles and roads over the years. And the "driving tests" where they put people in cars or simulators and then change some aspect to measure differences in driving? Worthless. When people know they're being tested, they're fully alert and drive quite differently from the usual daydreaming half-asleep morning commute.

In this case, someone wanted to make a point, and it was probably anti-SUV, and its easy to mine the data to make that point if you want to.

[bruce1]

Why on a cold and slippery winter morning are most of the vehicles I see in the ditch four wheel drives with too high a center of gravity or hopped up Hondas?

If you do want a small car the Hyundi have an excellent warranty

Bruce

[trumpeting_angel]

As a mini-van driver, I'd LOVE to see it mean that these cars are much safer. But they're being driven around by people like me - soccer(hockey)moms with a couple of kids in the built-in kid seats. Little enough testosterone, and in all likelihood very little macho need to prove that our vehicle is faster than yours. In theory, we should be driving safely to protect our children, should be traveling famliar roads, and shouldn't be out in the ice storms trying to get back from the game in another state.

And of course, we are never distracted by crying, fighting, or even just annoying children in the back seat.

Hmm, maybe these cars ARE safer!

Anne

[sgeeeee]

Metal is good, but so is a low center of gravity.

Some stats from a recent NY Times article:

minivans: 2.76 deaths per billion miles driven
large cars: 3.3
SUVs > 5100lbs: 3.79
midsize cars: 5.26
midsize SUVs: 6.73

Huh? Crash tests and rollover tests can tell you something (but not everything) about a car's safety, but this kind of data seems too easy to skew.

Assume a family has two vehicles: a 4WD SUV and a smaller car.

It's snowing outside and they need to go somewhere. Which are they likely to take?

One member of the family has to run an errand 3 blocks away and one has to drive 20 miles down the freeway to a nearby town. Which one is likely to take the SUV and which one is most likely to be involved in a fatal accident?

You can go on forever.

But recent government rollover tests do prove that at least some SUVs have potential rollover problems. I always review that kind of information before I buy.