It's Official: SUVs pose danger to cars

Congress is taking a close look at the dangers of the SUV at a Senate Commerce Committee today:

The spotlight will be on the nation’s top auto safety regulator, Jeffrey Runge, who last month stunned the industry by criticizing SUV safety. The administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called for meaningful and swift changes.

Runge, an emergency room physician who will be the featured witness at the hearing, is most concerned about rollover deaths and injuries in sport utility vehicles, seat belt use, and the threat posed to smaller cars by bigger and stronger SUVs.

“SUVs inflict more harm on occupants than other cars do,” said Brian O’Neill, president of an insurance industry group that will release new statistics on SUV safety at the hearing. (from CNN.com)

With the popularity of cross-over vehicles on the rise I think the SUV debate will move from the safety of the vehicles themselves to the safety of others on the road. It will be interesting to see how Congress deals with this issue considering there’s a war brewing in the middle east that, at it’s core, has a lot to do about oil. Also of interest is how they’ll react considering that many of them are shuttled around Washington in monster SUVs themselves.