By Zanny Minton Beddoes\The Economist
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
It is widely known that America’s roads are more deadly than those in other rich countries.
But there is debate about why.
One of our data journalists, Doug Dowson, found research by academics at the University of California, Berkeley that concluded that America’s heavy, bloated cars and trucks are a big factor.
To dig deeper he spent months collecting data on crashes in America, eventually building a dataset of more than 7.5m collisions across 14 states.
His analysis shows that, although bigger cars protect their occupants, for every life that the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks save in a crash more than a dozen are lost in smaller vehicles. Our cover in America this week explains how to make roads safer despite the growing popularity of giant vehicles.
As a driver of an SUV myself, it has given me (and hopefully our readers) some food for thought.
