Vous pensez que je parle de la guerre en Irak Pan'toute
Et pas tellement d'un ph�nom�ne Europ�en : Mais plut�t des SUV : (Sport Utility Vehicles) Je suis contre les gros SUV, surtout par principe (Ce qui n'est pas toujours le meilleur argument pour guider nos choix) J'ai toujour pris pour acquis qu'ils �taient plus s�curitaire (O.K. O.K. peut-�tre pas quand vous vous faites frapp� par un) Mais plus s�curitaire pour ces occupants Et (dans notre profession) on ne peut point �tre contre la s�curit� Mais quel surprises d'apprendre qu'ils sont plus dangereux que les autos !!! ????? Charles Brault D'un from article tir� du New York Times : Safer, but still not as safe as cars Fatality rates for sport utility vehicles and pickups have declines, but people are stll dying at a higher rate in them than they are in cars 1990-1991 (1987-89 model years) Fatality ratres per million registered vehicles Vehicle weight CARs SUVs PICKUPs Less than 2,500 Lbs 217 343 2,500 to 2,999 Lbs 171 227 284 3,000 to 3,499 Lbs 152 187 227 3,500 to 3,999 Lbs 132 178 181 4,000 to 4,499 Lbs 90 120 187 4,500 to 4,999 Lbs 154 130 5,000 Lbs or more 154 2000-2001 (1997-99 model years) Fatality ratres per million registered vehicles Vehicle weight CARs SUVs PICKUPs Less than 2,500 Lbs 152 2,500 to 2,999 Lbs 147 154 175 3,000 to 3,499 Lbs 127 129 188 3,500 to 3,999 Lbs 87 160 169 4,000 to 4,499 Lbs 95 106 153 4,500 to 4,999 Lbs 123 142 5,000 Lbs or more 109 106 Source : Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Article du New York times : How an S.U.V. Stacks Up to a Car on the Test Track http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/business/yourmoney/22suvs.html February 22, 2004 By DANNY HAKIM FLAT ROCK, Mich. IF you've never purposely spun out once, twice, three times in a row in a $75,000 Mercedes, well, you're not a rich, bored 16-year-old, a test-track driver or an auto reporter. Part of the joy, and terror, of writing about the car business is being asked to do stupid things in vehicles that other people spend a lifetime trying to avoid. Last week, for instance, I found myself sitting in a Mercedes sedan, and then a BMW sport utility vehicle, staring down a narrow road leading to a test track shaped like an open parking lot. It was a brittle-cold Michigan morning, cold enough to shatter orange rubber road cones instead of bending them. I wore a tie and leather jacket and was issued a big white, bowling-ball-shaped racing helmet. The mission was simple enough: Run a car and an S.U.V. through the same handling test and see what's different about how these vehicles perform. Why do this now? This year, the federal government overhauled its rollover testing system. In the past, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration simply plugged vehicle specifications into a mathematical formula to determine a star rating, which it posts at www.safercars.gov. Five stars means that a vehicle has a rollover risk of less than 10 percent in a single-vehicle accident; four stars, 10 percent to 20 percent; three stars, 20 percent to 30 percent; and so on. But, after the highly publicized string of rollover deaths in Explorers equipped with Firestone tires in the late 1990's, Congress ordered the traffic safety agency to come up with a new test that included tests in the real world, on a track. The new test combines the mathematical formula with a series of fishhook maneuvers, jarring turns that replicate what happens when drivers drift off the road and then try to overcompensate in their steering. The tests are done at speeds of 35 to 50 miles an hour, but they are stopped if a vehicle goes up on two wheels. The first crop of results, for 2004 models, came out this month, covering 16 vehicle lines. Some of the S.U.V.'s had better scores than in previous model years, but only because the test methodology had changed. The ratings of four-wheel-drive versions of several sport utilities, including the Chevrolet Trailblazer and the GMC Envoy, rose to four stars from three, even though the 2004 models were no different from those of the previous year. So far, the new system is providing a wider range of grades, and specific information about vehicles that tip up during tests. A pickup truck version of the 2004 Explorer received the poorest rating, just two stars, and tipped up on two wheels during the government's test, as did the Tacoma, another pickup. Still, the four-star performance by some S.U.V.'s from G.M. led to exultation among lobbyists. "S.U.V. Rollover Hysteria Appears Misplaced," said the headline of a news release by the Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America, a group run by industry lobbyists and consultants. "I find it very interesting that the S.U.V.'s came out very well," said Ron DeFore, the group's communications director, in an interview. "What I think is newsworthy is that there was very little if any television coverage of those ratings. Why? Because it's not sensational, because it does not show S.U.V.'s in a negative light." Safety experts said that because only a relative few vehicles had been tested so far, more testing would be needed to understand the results fully. But they said they hoped that the new tests would provide a wider range of ratings among different S.U.V.'s and pickups. "I think there are many S.U.V.'s, probably a majority of S.U.V.'s, that have stability issues, as far as I'm concerned," said Brian O'Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an insurance industry research group. "What consumers really need to know, if they're bound and determined to buy an S.U.V., is which ones are more stable than others." Many people tend to assume that sport utility vehicles are safer than cars because of the Sherman tank theory of auto safety: if it's big, it must be safe. But while a Sherman tank hugs the ground, S.U.V.'s have a high ground clearance that makes them less stable and more prone to rollovers, according to federal statistics. The industry often points out that only 2.5 percent of accidents involve rollovers. But rollovers in both cars and trucks account for a staggering 33 percent of occupant fatalities, or more than 10,000 deaths a year. That makes rollovers akin to car cancer. Rare? Yes. But also deadly. Big sedans and wagons have lower fatality rates over all than any class of S.U.V. or pickup truck, according to the most recent findings of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. A recent study by the group of accidents in 2000 and 2001 showed that 87 occupants died for every million registered cars weighing 3,000 to 3,500 pounds. That was 22 percent fewer deaths than in any class of S.U.V. or pickup truck. But the gap has been narrowing. A decade earlier, the safest S.U.V. and pickup categories had fatality rates at least 33 percent higher than the safest cars. The industry is also working jointly on an effort to make S.U.V.'s and pickups less dangerous when they collide with cars. My recent visit to a test track was not to replicate the government's demanding test. I'm not that stupid. Instead, I went to a track operated by Bosch, the German auto supplier, to try a less dangerous test. And to be fair to Mercedes and BMW, I was testing their vehicles with and without a stability technology, built by Bosch, that is standard equipment in the vehicles. Stability control is common in Europe but uncommon in the United States, especially in pickups. I wanted to see how a car and an S.U.V. performed with and without the technology. How does Bosch's work? Basically, a computer brain a little bigger than a fist sits under the hood, collecting data from sensors that monitor the rotation of the tires, how hard the driver is turning the steering wheel and the pressure on the brakes. The computer then decides if the driver is losing control of the vehicle and, if so, applies brake pressure to individual tires to restore order. Part of the goal of the new tests is to determine how such systems can affect safety in real-world driving. But the government tests go only so far. A majority of rollovers happen when a driver loses control and a vehicle veers off the road. A stability system can prevent that from happening in the first place. >From the outset of my visit to the Bosch track, there were hints about how different vehicle types might perform. The company had outfitted a BMW X5 S.U.V. with a safety cage, a grid of metal bars reinforcing the passenger compartment. The X5 also had metal wings attached to its side, known in the business as outriggers. They allow the vehicle to tip up on two wheels without rolling over and injuring the test driver. In other words, if the wheels come off the ground, you know there's a problem, but you don't die finding out. Add the helmet, and I felt as if I were suiting up for the Daytona 500. In the sedan, by contrast, I didn't even have to wear my helmet, and there was no safety cage or outriggers. And to roll the sedan over, "you'd have to do a very severe maneuver," said Paul Mercurio, an engineer for Bosch. "You don't have to get the C.G." - that's center of gravity - "very high to get the vehicle to a point where it's unstable." He added that any S.U.V. that Bosch tested was equipped with outriggers. FOR our test, he explained, we would do a double lane change, a procedure that is considerably less demanding than the government's. Essentially, that means three turns. Imagine you're doing 60 m.p.h. on a two-lane road and a car swerves in front of you. You swerve across the center line and, finding yourself pointed towards oncoming traffic, you swerve back. Generally, this can cause a car to lurch across the first lane and off the road. So you try to adjust your way back on the road. But there was more to the double lane change than I had imagined. "What we're going to do here is, I'm going to show you the course, but we have to wait," Paul said, for "the water truck." "The water truck?" I asked. Then it appeared: a tanker truck spraying fanlike streams all over the track and flooding it, to make for a more dramatic test. "I've got to warn you," I told Paul. "I'm kind of a wuss." Everything is going to be fine, he said, because he does this all the time. In the Mercedes, I put pedal to metal. I vault between two parallel lines of orange cones forming one lane, then jerk quickly to the left into another lane. I hear screeches as my body slides toward the door. Back right, back left. With the stability system on, the Mercedes handles the sudden movements nimbly. On another run, with the system disabled, I steer easily enough into the left lane, then veer right. Turning back left spins the car into a screeching 180 as water flecks the windshield. Next, the BMW. Paul says: "When you're doing a maneuver and you go up on two wheels, it's the weirdest feeling because your body feel is, once you get past a certain point, you feel like you're really gone. No matter what's out there. And it's the weirdest feeling to do that." That's good to know. Paul, who is 44, demonstrates stability control technology for a living. In other words, he is paid to drive fast and to explain how the technology works. He is a Motor City lifer, the son of a Ford engineer. Do things ever go wrong? Sure. He once wrecked a brand new Cadillac, he tells me. But bad things don't happen with visitors in the car. Back to the BMW. Forty, 50, 60 m.p.h. With the stability control system on, I vault left, then turn back right. Handling the S.U.V. is a bit more of a struggle than handling the car. I chicken out and pull back from the last turn. "You didn't steer back," Paul says. That's true. So we try it again, and I'm able to navigate through the course without too much trouble. Then, the system is disabled. Forty, 50, 60 m.p.h. Turn left, turn right. I hear cones snapping apart. I jerk back left and the S.U.V. skids and starts to bounce up and down as the tire under me, I'm told later by someone watching, comes about 5 inches off the ground. "There's that hopping - see that?" Paul asks. Yes, I see that. "All the weight of the vehicle is shifting up on that side,'' he says. "It's on the tire and off, on the tire and off." ONE of the most interesting aspects of the government's tests is that the agency will be publicizing which vehicles go up on two wheels during testing. (Keep in mind that, during my test of the BMW with its standard equipment, it stayed on the ground - though it is by no means a predictor of the government's more demanding test.) So why would someone want to buy a vehicle that tips? Chris Tinto, a top Toyota safety expert, said the two vehicles that tipped up in the first round of government testing - the Toyota Tacoma and Ford Explorer SportTrac - are both small pickups. A larger pickup, the Chevrolet Silverado, did not. "I think you'll find other vehicles in its class will behave similarly,'' Mr. Tinto said, adding, "Vehicles of comparable size and shape will tip up at the same speeds." Asked the same question as Mr. Tinto, Mr. O'Neill of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said, "I personally wouldn't.'' Like many safety experts, Mr. O'Neill drives a large sedan, in his case a Lexus LS430, as well as a Toyota Sienna minivan. Broadly speaking, minivans as a class are safer than cars or S.U.V.'s. In 2002, there were 15.72 occupant deaths in every 100,000 passenger cars registered in the United States, compared with 16.52 deaths in every 100,000 S.U.V.'s, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Minivans and other light-duty vans had a fatality rate of 11.47 per 100,000. "Personally, I believe a minivan is as functional as an S.U.V. without the handling questions," Mr. O'Neill said. "It's typically a less-expensive vehicle. It's just not trendy." The new tests are not perfect. Joan Claybrook, the former head of the traffic safety agency and the current president of Public Citizen, a consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, calls them only a first step. Next, she said, the ratings should be made more visible to the public. How many people know that there is a Web site called www.safercars.gov where you can look this stuff up, she asks? She says the information should be posted on the window stickers of every vehicle. Second, she said there should be a minimum performance standard, so that the worst vehicles are kept off the road. For now, the government has said it plans to post on its Web site, under its star ratings, the fact that a certain vehicle tipped up during testing. This is information worth looking up. After all, not all S.U.V.'s have wings. If they did, popping up on two wheels might not turn out so bad, so often. Even when the road's wet. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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