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Safe ride

Children are not necessarily safer in an SUV

DECEPTIVE BULK The benefit of weight is erased by the higher risk of rolling over

Sport utility vehicles may seem indomitable as they plough along; but despite their bulk, children who ride in them are no better protected than those riding in ordinary cars, a new study finds.

Writing in the current issue of Pediatrics, researchers say they have found little difference in injuries when looking at crashes involving passenger cars and SUV's, which on average weigh 1,317 pounds more. The lead author of the study was Dr. Lauren Daly of the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del.

Many parents believe that SUVs are safer and buy them, at least in part, to protect their children, the researchers noted.

"Our sense was that most people have been assuming they were safer - and, frankly, we were, too," said the senior author of the study, Dr. Dennis R. Durbin of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

This belief, however, was not borne out when the researchers looked at data from crashes in which almost 4,000 children were travelling in either SUV's or cars.

Studies have shown that as a general rule, the bigger a car, the safer it is.

But with SUVs, the new study reports, whatever benefits that come with the added weight are erased by the higher risk of rolling over.

While rolling over is a danger for both kinds of vehicles, rollovers occurred twice as often in SUVs, the study found, and children were three times as likely to be injured in rollovers than in other kinds of accidents.

And while the researchers found that the use of proper restraining devices was important in all cars, it is especially important in SUVs because of the greater incidence of rollovers.

The study does not mean that SUVs are more dangerous for their passengers, Durbin said.

But parents may want to take the findings into account when choosing a car, the authors said, and it does suggest that paediatricians should advise SUV-owning parents to make sure their children are properly restrained.

COURTESY: THE NEW YORK TIMES

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