Head-on SUV Accidents Cause Many Personal Injuries

Ft. Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky is one of the people who believes that driving a sports utility vehicle (SUV) will help him avoid being seriously injured in a crash. Yet recent testing by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety just proved that this common conception is not entirely accurate.

Most motorists are generally aware of the tests The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety do to determine the safety of cars involved in head-on and side impact crashes. Most people don’t realize that one of the most common types of car accidents involve so-called overlap crashes; that is, when the front corner of a vehicle crashes nearly head-on but actually closer to the drivers’ sides of passing vehicles, other types of overlap crashes happen when a vehicle strikes a pole or tree. These types of crashes account for nearly 25% of all serious car accident injuries. Given the increasing number of these overlap crashes and their resulting personal injuries and wrongful deaths, including nearly 1500 vehicle occupants who lost their lives in overlap crashes over the past two years.

Many of the small SUVs in the study sustained significant intrusion, over one foot, into the occupant compartment. Intrusion causes a vehicle’s instrument panel and parking brake to rapidly move toward the driver, impacting their knees and torso. Additionally, one of the vehicles even had a door during the test. If a vehicle door were to open during an actual crash, it is likely the occupant would be ejected, and killed. Death is sadly the most frequent outcome on an ejected occupant.

Miami car accident attorney Joseph Lipsky hopes those seeking to purchase a new SUV, particularly a smaller one, take a hard look at The Institute’s test results so that they purchase a vehicle which gives them the greatest chance of surviving an overlap or head-on collision.