Editorial: Buyers need all the facts

Tuesday, May 30, 2000 | 9:27 a.m.

The U.S. Transportation Department is moving in the right direction by proposing a five-star rating system that would let consumers know which cars, vans, pickups and sport utility vehicles are most prone to roll over. This issue is not trifling: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that there are 9,500 deaths every year due to rollovers.

Another reason why rollovers have garnered so much attention is that while consumers increasingly are buying sport utility vehicles -- in part because they are larger than standard automobiles and provide a greater feeling of security for the driver -- the fact is rollovers are a more frequent cause of death in SUVs than in other vehicles. Of the fatalities in SUVs, 62 percent are from rollover crashes. Compare the SUV percentage to vans and pickups (slightly more than 40 percent) and cars (22 percent), and it's easy to see why the government believes there is a problem.

Under its current proposal, the ratings would be devised from a formula based on a vehicle's width and the height of its center of gravity. Automakers don't like the plan, though, because they believe the issue is too complex to be relegated to a five-star rating system. Safety advocates, meanwhile, believe the plan is too lenient, saying that a standard based simply on a mathematical formula isn't enough, that there should be live driving tests to measure how likely it is a vehicle will turn over in a crash. Federal regulators should listen to the safety advocates and revise their proposal to include tests involving actual driving conditions before releasing their ratings.

Automakers may not like a rating system, but it is preferable to having the government mandate performance standards for these vehicles. Under the government's developing plan, automakers still would be free to design these vehicles the way they please, but consumers will be provided information to make an informed decision as to whether they want to purchase a car or SUV if it is more likely to tip over. This is no different than the current situation of letting consumers know other performance standards, such as the gas mileage a vehicle gets, or the rankings for performance from front- and side-impact crashes.