The auto safety community wants to lighten America's increasingly heavy foot.

Activists and officials are worried that decades of gains from safer vehicles are being diluted by a new crop of hot cars, hot drivers and overheated advertising. So they're pressuring the federal government to help, and organizing a safety "summit" to put on the brakes.

The activists point to the growing number of cars equipped with high-powered engines with 400, and even 500, horsepower. They are unhappy, as well, about ads for the newest generation of high performance cars that emphasize speed.

"We want the car companies to really look at their ads and to be more responsible," said Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association.

Federal regulators recognize the problem but are reluctant to try to force changes. "I think you have to differentiate the performance of a vehicle versus the driver's misuse of that performance," said Jeffrey Runge, who is the nation's top auto safety official as administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But, he said in an interview yesterday, carmakers have a responsibility to understand the potential impact of their advertising. "I'm really not inclined to jawbone the industry into toning down their ads," he said, "but I would like them to be mindful of the messages being sent, particularly to younger drivers, about speed and performance."

In June, the safety agency plans to sponsor what organizers are calling a summit in Washington at which an international group of safety experts and activists and law enforcement and other government officials are expect to explore ideas for slowing down America.

The debate is almost as old as the automobile itself. Carmakers say they simply give customers what they want. "Right now the drive for more and more power in cars is way larger than the drive for more and more hybrids," General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz told reporters Monday at a media preview of the Detroit auto show.

What's new is that carmakers are in another horsepower race unlike any before. They're now turning out vehicles that can outrun any of the "muscle cars," produced in the industry's last power race in the 1960s. Even Volvo, which has long emphasized safety as a marketing tool, is displaying a 600 hp. experimental version of its XC90 SUV in Los Angeles.

Runge's agency estimates that one or more drivers involved in 30 percent of fatal crashes was speeding.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group based on Virginia, says sporty models tend to have higher death rates because they tend to be driven more aggressively and often are relatively lighter in weight.

In a report a year ago, the institute cited research showing increased fatalities on interstate highways where speed limits had been raised from 55 mph to as much as 75 mph during the 1990s. "Yet," the group said, "motorists on both rural and urban roads are going faster and faster, encouraged by automakers who build ever more powerful cars and tout their speed capabilities in ad after ad."

Some local police say speeds are increasing in this region as well. "It's edging up and up," said Lt. Henry Bishop of the Suffolk County Police Highway Patrol Bureau. "Where they used to be doing 72 mph, they're now pushing 75 and 80."

Not surprisingly, many drivers stopped by police for speeding claim they are only keeping up with the flow. "I generally pass very few people," said a 59 year-old male driver of a Lexus ES 300 who was stopped and warned Tuesday for driving 73 mph on the Long Island Expressway in Brookhaven Town.

Experts concede that a love of speed is a cultural trait - in the United States and elsewhere - that's not easy to control and that speed is perceived by many drivers as a low-risk infraction. Veteran auto industry analyst Chris Cedergren, with the market research firm Nextrend of Thousand Oaks, Calif., says that in survey after survey by his firm, new car buyers cite power and performance as among the most important factors in choosing a vehicle. "Vehicles are entertaining and the faster they go the more entertaining they are."

Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, notes that carmakers warn viewers that slides and other automotive antics in ads are done by professional drivers on closed courses. Further, he says, "Automakers spend a lot of money each year promoting safety."

 

	HORSEPOWER	0-60 mph
Chevrolet Corvette Z06	500	3.5 sec.
Dodge Viper SRT10	500	4 sec.
BMW M5	500	4.5 sec.
Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG	469	4.5 sec.
Cadillac STS-V	440	4.9 sec.
Dodge Magnum SRT8	425	5 sec.
Pontiac GTO	400	5.2 sec.
Ford Mustang GT	300	5.4 sec.
Dodge Charger	340	6 sec.

- Tom Incantalupo, Newsday, Thursday, January 13, 2005

Big Bills For Little Taps (Safety Study of Cars vs. SUVs)

Because of bumper mismatches, even a love tap from a sport utility vehicle can cause major damage to cars, an insurance industry group reported yesterday.

The Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said that in 10-mph crash tests of 10 pairs of SUVs and passenger cars, the cars were the big losers, sustaining as much as $4,984 in estimated damage.

Each pair consisted of a car and an SUV from the same manufacturer. In the tests, SUVs struck the cars in the rear and cars struck the SUVs in the rear. "We paired vehicles from a single manufacturer because we thought that, at a minimum, automakers should be paying attention to the compatibility of the bumpers across their own fleets," the insurance group said in a statement.

Costly damages

The group has long criticized the performance of many car and truck bumpers in protecting vehicles from body damage in low-speed crashes. Institute officials also have criticized the makers of SUVs for structural designs that often produce deaths and serious injuries among the occupants of cars struck at higher speeds by SUVs and other light trucks.

Damages to the cars in the new low-speed tests ranged from $555 to a Ford Taurus rear-ended by a Ford Explorer to $4,984 sustained by a Volvo S40 crashed into the rear of a Volvo XC90.

Damage to the SUVs in the crashes ranged from $701 to the Explorer crashed into the rear of the Taurus to $2,848 sustained by a Jeep Grand Cherokee run into the rear of a Dodge Stratus.

"The bumpers in some vehicle pairs completely bypassed each other in the tests," the group said. Test photos released by the group show the nose of a Nissan Altima sedan sliding beneath the rear of a Nissan Murano SUV. Resulting damage to the Altima's hood cost $4,507 to repair, the institute said. Similarly, the Grand Cherokee's front bumper overrode the rear bumper of the Stratus causing $3,281 in damage to the car's trunk lid and the rear fenders crumpled.

Federal regulations set minimum requirements for passenger car bumpers but none for those of SUVs, the group notes. In fact, some SUVs lack any bumpers, the institute said.

The Fords generally fared best in the low-speed collisions, the institute said. "This is almost entirely because the bumpers on the two Fords match up better than the bumpers on the other vehicles," the group said.

The institute said some of the cars suffered major coolant leaks in the low-speed collisions. "In real world conditions like these, the motorists couldn't even drive away," the group said. "So, in addition to paying for costly repairs, the drivers would face the aggravation of having to get their vehicles towed."

The institute also was critical of the performance of some SUVs when crashed into each other.

Carmakers respond

Ford Motor Co.'s Volvo unit charged in a statement from its New Jersey headquarters that the institute tests ignore the important issue of safety, which is Volvo's primary concern in designing bumpers and bodies to absorb energy. "What we look at is the safety of the vehicle, not the cosmetics of it," said spokesman Dan Johnston. "What we design for is crashing."

Luis Morais, senior manager of vehicle safety strategy for DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group in Auburn Hills, Mich., expressed similar sentiments and also noted that the Grand Cherokee tested by the institute was an '04 model no longer in production, replaced by a redesigned 2005 model. But Morais said Chrysler would work with the institute to try to improve designs.

"You're always going to have vehicles of different sizes and heights," he said, "and we need to understand this test better."

Things that go bump

An insurance-industry study examining rear-enders between different makes of cars and SUVs found that bumper compatibility can greatly reduce damage on both vehicles. The following tests were conducted at 10 mph.

MATCH. Comparable bumper heights on the Ford Explorer and Taurus resulted in the least damage among the vehicles tested.

 

CAR REAR-ENDS SUV	Damage to Car	Damage to SUV
Ford Taurus into Explorer	$1,784	$824
Chevrolet Malibu into TrailBlazer	$3,163	$937
Dodge Stratus into Jeep Grand Cherokee*	$3,256	$1,279
Nissan Altima into Murano	$4,507	$1,188
Volvo S40 into XC90	$4,984	$1,096

 

SUV INTO CAR	Damage to Car	Damage to SUV
Ford Explorer into Taurus	$701	$555
Volvo XC90 into S40	$2,361	$1,695
Chevrolet TrailBlazer into Malibu	$2,316	$1,851
Nissan Murano into Altima	$2,485	$2,517
Jeep Grand Cherokee into Dodge Stratus*	$3,281	$2,848

  *Both makes owned by DaimlerChrysler

SOURCE: INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY

- Tom Incantalupo, Newsday, Tuesday, September 14, 2004