A new study
released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety seems to indicate that
redesigned SUV and truck bumpers – lowered to better match up with cars and fitted with energy absorbing devices – can
help save lives in collisions.
When a passenger car and SUV meet in a head-on collision, the death rate dropped
by 18-21% when the SUV was fitted with the redesigned bumpers. When SUVs hit the side of cars – the much-feared t-bone
collision – the death rate dropped by nearly 50%. For pickup trucks fitted with the same type of bumpers, a reduction
in the fatality rate was also observed, but the improvement was much smaller. No explanation was given for this
discrepancy.
Of note is the fact that the redesigned bumpers did virtually nothing to decrease the death rate of
unbelted passengers. One is probably safe in assuming that mismatched bumper heights are apparently of little
importance when the passengers are ejected from the vehicle.