Feynn: Your nephew is indeed fortunate to have been driving an SUV. Unfortunately, father:wally does not agree that the safety of SUV drivers is a good thing. He will probably point out that the life of the suicide (?) may have been saved if your nephew had been driving a Geo Metro. One of his gripes is that SUVs are dangerous to people who drive smaller vehicles.
This MPSIMS thread discusses a Jeep Grand Cherokee that rolled over five times. There is a link on that page to MSNBC that shows the rollover as it happened. To head off father:wally 's claim that, “See! SUVs roll over!”, I will point out that any passenger vehicle that departed the road in the same way would have rolled over. Here’s the important bit:
So two of father:wally 's “points” are disproved: First, that SUVs are unsafe (as you pointed out in your poignant post); and second, that buying an SUV for the safety of its occupants is a “fantastic scenario” (ibid.).
Thus far in this thread, people have pointed out that SUVs are used for driving offroad, carrying people, carrying equipment, carrying building materials, everyday commuting, and providing a safe environment in case of a severe accident.
He has yet to provide a single example of a “fantastic scenario”.
Just a little more info I forgot… the Contour was moving at approx 60 mph as the woman who made the life saving phone call had been following her for a number of miles at a similar speed. The woman in the Contour actually was practicing swerving into the oncoming lane before she encountered my nephew and the lady with the cell was afraid to pass the car ahead due to the driver’s erratic behaviour.
Another word of thanks goes to the guys driving the Safeway trucks, you can see them in the picture if you look. The Jeep caught fire after it came to rest and they were able to put the fire out with the extinguishers they were carrying.
While at the hospital the nurses in intensive care didn’t believe that my nephew was the driver as they had rarely seen any driver survive an impact this severe with so few injuries. He lost some teeth but other than that he had no upper body injuries… not a scratch. His friends were discharged from the hospital a few days after the accident. My nephew was writing notes to people the next day as the respirator (a cautionary procedure) prevented him from speaking.