High and Mighty

SUVs, The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way

By: Keith Bradsher. Published by: PublicAffairs, New York; 200X. ISBN: 1-58648-123-1(hardback) $28.00.

Reviewer:  Eddie Wren

All contents copyright ©, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., 2003, unless specified otherwise. All rights reserved.

IMPORTANT: click here to read the DISCLAIMER

With what is clearly in-depth research, over a period of years, Keith Bradsher has acquired an all-encompassing knowledge of the now-ubiquitous SUV.

His veracity is beyond doubt as he explodes the myth that people traveling in SUVs are safer than the occupants of other vehicles. Using NHTSA/IIHS statistics, he shows that SUVs are undeniably much more likely to roll over -- sometimes with the least provocation -- and that if they do roll, the occupants are in extreme danger of being killed. He points out, too, that because of its inevitably high front end, an SUV will usually ride up and over any normal car that it collides with from the front or the rear, which is fine as long as you -- as the car occupant -- don't mind wearing an SUV's engine where your brain used to be.

Mr. Bradsher then goes on to prove that buying one's own SUV, in order to protect oneself from other SUVs is, perhaps surprisingly, not the safest or the best solution.

Beyond all of the horrifying safety information that this excellent book contains, Bradsher also gives a revealing and often startling insight into the pressures placed upon auto writers to say good things about given vehicles, and the utterly unacceptable and sometimes mafia-like deals that are struck between decision makers.

Other reviewers have been vitriolic about the book, saying that it makes no allowances for people who need an SUV to help with their livelihoods. I can only guess that these people did not read the full book, as Mr. Bradsher does make specific comments in favor of people who truly do need off-road capabilities.

I am pleased to own the book. I have annotated the page margins more so than in any other driving book I posses, and I shall be referring to it very regularly indeed.

This book should be compulsory reading, not only for existing owners of SUVs (so that they can comprehend and, hopefully, restrain the destructive power that they command) and potential owners of such, but also for any adult who ever travels by road!

Mr. Bradsher has been the target of many barbed comments -- some by other auto writers -- for him having the 'audacity' to write this book. Yet reading the entire book will reveal that only those with narrow minds or selfish interest will squirm at what he has written. How one could wish that all investigative journalism was as perceptive and clear-cut as this book.