Sports utility vehicles (SUVs) -- the 4x4 behemoths already targeted by environmentalists for their carbon pollution -- should carry health warnings because of their danger to pedestrians, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says.
An editorial in yesterday's issue of the BMJ points out that the risk of fatality when an SUV collides with a pedestrian is nearly twice that of a similar event involving a passenger car.
The reason for this is not the SUV's larger size and mass, but its higher bonnet, it says.
When a passenger car hits a pedestrian, its bumper typically strikes the legs, the leading edge of the bonnet then hits the femur or pelvis and the pedestrian then folds downward, hitting the bonnet or windscreen.
This so-called "wrap and carry" movement means that a lot of the energy of impact is likely to be transferred to the more pliable steel of the bonnet.
In addition, the key organs of the upper body are less likely to get directly hit.
But with an SUV, there is no folding movement -- the high, blunt front end of the vehicle wacks straight into the vital organs, doubling the injuries to vulnerable regions such as the head, thorax and abdomen.
The editorial says the rise in SUV sales in many countries is especially dangerous to older people, who account for an ever-growing part of the population.
These vehicles also hold out
specific dangers for young children when the driver is reversing, and cannot see out of the high back window.
The article calls for governments to do more to investigate the role of SUVs in accidents involving
pedestrians.
And, it says, vehicle manufacturers and distributors should display warning notices on SUVs to "advise potential purchasers of the increased risk of severe injury and death to pedestrians associated with this [sic]
vehicles."
It admits, though: "Resistance from the industry to such initiatives is likely to be strong, just as it has been from the tobacco industry for warnings on cigarettes."
The editorial is penned by Desmond O'Neill, an associate professor of medical gerontology, and Ciaran Simms, a lecturer in mechanical
engineering, both at Trinity College, Dublin.
In Europe, sales of SUVs have increased by 15 percent in the past year, while sales of standard cars have dropped by 4 percent, according to figures they cited.
In the US, 40 percent of new
vehicles are officially categorised as light trucks or vans, many of which are SUVs.
Pedestrians account for about 20 percent of road casualties in the European Union, but rise to nearly 50 percent in poor countries, where roads are worse and more people travel on foot.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist