http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?...8B-B2608F307BDB

Alight, who's gonna wuss out and buy an SUV?

Well... when you name things Blazer and Firebird.

The funny thing is that the government gives the F-body very high marks in roll over testing.

But, as someone once said:

"The government makes the ratings, 16-24 year olds make the statistics".

check out those camaro vs. firebird numbers...

shows which f-body the better drivers like


check those mustang vs. f-body numbers... yikes... i guess we're all morons

nah....just shows that the f-bodies are faster....get into trouble quicker!

These reports always miss the mark.... drivers are deadly, not cars! You cannot drive a high center of gravity vehicle like a sports car, yada yada yada! This should be called the "Lack of Common Sense Report," or "Recent Studies on Natural Selection!"

damn I had a 99 2 door blazer... 5 speed & 4.3 V6
sold it to a friend, she got hit and it rolled, total loss.
a shame too, it was a nice truck

My thoughts were how many Kia Rio's and Mirages probably wrecked at 100-150mph?
Now how many Firebirds wrecked at 100-150mph?

Same goes for those cars wrecking in a turn because they took it too fast? Probably
not too many Rio's and Mirages.

The Rio and Mirage are small cars and the deaths in those vehicles were probably from
getting destroyed by gigantor SUV's.
The deaths in the F-body were probably a lot of "lost control at high speed" accidents.
Just goes to show how fast these cars are and how many people don't realize the
car's ability and thier inability to drive them at those speeds.

I guess it could be worse. I could be driving a Pinto with an Audi close behind me.

I didn't see audis or pintos anywhere on the list?

My mom had a late 80's Ford Bronco 2, which is the small one. That thing was high, narrow and my mom drives pretty fast. She never rolled it and I kept good shocks on it for her out of fear of her rolling it. I can see how bad shocks and a tight turn could get that thing to roll easily.



It is totally drivers and not cars. I would care to bet that modern SUV's on modern street tires can pull more g's then a lot of cars did in the 60's, so I'm not so sure that it's poor handling vehicles that cause death's. I think people just try to do too much when driving. Yesterday I saw someone shaving while driving. Two days ago a lady pulled out from a side street into my lane with about 7-8 car lengths, after sitting there for a little while waiting. That literaly scared the hell out of me; thank goodness for nice grippy tires and 3/4 ton brakes on the truck. I know she saw me because it was dark and you can't miss the big beamy headlights on my truck.

I'll also add poor maintance to the list of causes. All the time I see cars hitting bumps and occilating from bad shocks.

It's the drivers, not the vehicles. When I lived in Atlanta, it seemed like every weekend you'd hear about some kid wrecking his/her brand new Z28/TransAm that Mommy & Daddy just bought them. The really sad part, was the driver's that survived Mommy/Daddy would go out and buy them another one. Even when it's not Mommy/Daddy buying the car, but the yound driver themself, it's still a matter of driver error, not the car being inherently unsafe. Most kids today learn how to drive in a FWD low to moderate HP/TQ car. Combine their limited experience with a high HP/TQ rear wheel drive platform, and it's obvious what's going to happen.

I like driving my deathmobile quite a bit, actually. Just today I got to use my knee high retracting door blades to cut down a couple joggers on the side of the road. It's not all fun and games though. Couple weeks ago I ran over somebody's old granny, and she got stuck in my rear axle. Took me a good half an hour to get that mess pulled out from under there. Ruined a good shirt in the process too, but hey, that's the price you gotta pay sometimes when you wanna play.

A few things.



Due to their lack of grip, they can be going "less fast" and still take a turn too fast. The limits are lower on that car, but many drivers run out of talent at about the same level.



Many high school kids get those as first cars. These are the same new drivers who have traditionally had a high accident and a high fatality rate. Maybe it's not SUV's after all (and maybe it is).



A kia at 85mph is "high speed". Just because an F-body will run 170-ish does not automatically mean that the fatalities all occured at 150 mph.

There are an awful lot of assumptions in those last two statements.

Leaving us with:



That's a pretty big assumption, based on a couple of big assumptions. I'm not saying that you are wrong (without finding the data to back it up), just that it's difficult to present an arguement as fact when it's based completely on a couple of guesses.

I'm not trying to give you a difficult time, but these cars seem to have a "stereotype" about high speeds and death. And, if there are numbers to back that up, then I guess it's well deserved. If not, we are just adding to the "fear" (or we believe it ourselves).

To bring things down to a more practical, realistc level: assuming that drivers are at least as great a factor as the vehicles they drive; what are the personal driving statistics of the folks on this board? How long have you been a licensed driver? How many moving violations? How many "at fault accidents? Rough estimate, total miles driven? I'll be the guinea pig:

Licensed in 1965 (40years)
1 speeding violation
Zero "at fault" accidents
At least 800,000-1,000,000 miles
60+ HPDE events w/o incident
Owner of Deathmobile since2002

On Firestone 500's.

I'm 32. (started driving at 16)

1 accident (totalled a 750 sportbike at ludicris speed. I love helmets!).
28 tickets (not a typo)
no vehicle accidents (and the bike was a freak thing, stupid and ran out of talent and was run off of the road by an officer of the law. Oops.)
I've logged 100,000 miles in my old 1989 Formula and 55K in my current car (for time in death mobile)

Roughly 400,000+ miles in that time.

Many autocrosses.

started driving at 17, i'm 27 now

~10 moving violations
1 accident in my sweet ass Honda CRX HF when i was 17(my fault)
wrecked my 2000 Z28(not a driving error)

had the 2000 Z28 for 30k miles.. and i've had the IROC for only about 4k miles
i've been driving trucks 5 days a week, all day long for about 7 years now

24, started driving at 16. Driving a deathtrap since the day I turned 18 (bought the Camaro as my b-day gift to myself)

18 moving violations

1 minor fender bender, that was not my fault. (it was minor, thanks to me being in a high performance car, and having some HPDE training. I can go into more details if people like, but I was ran off the road by an oncoming SUV in my lane, and spun the car 3 times, and as it was coming to a stop, I minorly brushed a dirt embankment, and scratched some paint.)

I've put 106k miles on the camaro, I put 20k on my first car, and I've put 45k on my Audi.

puts me at about 170k driven.

It was a joke or my attempt at some humor.
Pintos were known for blowing up if they get rearended and Audi's had a sudden acceration problem.