A new federal study of how vehicles interact in crashes has found that Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles seem to be especially deadly to the occupants of cars they hit, even compared with other midsize sport utility vehicles, the New York Times (NYT) reported this week.
The statistical study calculated that four-door Explorers with four- wheel drive killed 10 car drivers for every 1,000 crashes between Explorers and cars that were reported to police from 1991 to 1997.
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By contrast, the study said, several other midsize sport utility vehicles, like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Toyota 4Runner and Chevrolet Blazer, killed five to seven car drivers for every 1,000 crashes with cars.
The rate for car drivers in collisions with other cars was six-tenths of a death per 1,000 crashes, according to the study, which was issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the NYT said.
The analysis was done by Hans Joksch, a University of Michigan researcher and a leading traffic safety statistician, under a contract from the safety agency, which is a part of the Transportation Department.
Limited numbers of crashes in the database for each model created a fairly wide range of error in the calculations, the NYT said.
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By GlobalDataFor the Explorer, for example, there was a 95 percent chance that the true death rate of car drivers was 7 to 13 per 1,000 crashes.
The error range meant that it was statistically possible, although unlikely, that one or more of the other midsize sport utilities was deadlier than the Explorer.
The newspaper also noted that the study cautioned that the error ranges themselves might be imprecise.
But, of the seven sport utilities for which adequate data existed to analyse death rates, only the Isuzu Trooper inflicted a low enough death rate on cars to be comparable with cars, the study found.
Ford dismissed the study as meaningless because of the wide ranges of error, the NYT said.
“Error ranges are so large as to be inconclusive,” Ford spokesman Ken Zino told the newspaper.
The study also did not review any full-size sport utility vehicles, which might inflict more damage than the Explorer, Zino noted.
Joksch told the NYT there was not enough crash data yet for the larger models, which did not enter the market in very large numbers until 1995.
And while error ranges may be wide for individual models, the errors in comparing models are likely to be much smaller, he added.
Ford has redesigned the 2002 Explorer, scheduled to go on sale later this month, to make it much less deadly to the occupants of cars it hits, the NYT said.
According to the newspaper, the study also noted that the weight alone of the Explorer and other sport utility vehicles did not explain their deadliness: large cars that weigh as much as the Explorer typically kill two car drivers per 1,000 crashes reported to the police, the study found.
“I don’t know why the Explorer is sticking out, but it does so,” Mr. Joksch said in an interview reported by the NYT.
