Are big SUVs really safe?

There are recent commercials from GM bragging that their new Suburburn is big, bad and driven mostly by women. This is of course due to the precious cargo, as it states, showing the children in the back seat.

Now is it really safer than a minivan?

In a 35mph crash test, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade has a 16% chance of a life-threatening head injury, a 20% chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a 35% chance of a leg injury.

The numbers for the Ford Windstar minivan — a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame — are 2%, 4% and 1%, respectively.

And that’s just crash test today. Factor in that SUVs are bigger and bulkier giving them poor handling and maneuver ability, which just increases the chance they get in an accident.

Read the full New Yorker article on SUVs and safety.