What's safer, an SUV or a sedan?

Martin J. Hernandez:

What's safer, an SUV or a sedan?

Let's talk about that. Quite often, people ask me, "What is safer in a car accident, an SUV or a sedan?" Well, the answer's going to be very simple, in the Battle of the Bulge, the big one wins. The difference between an SUV and a sedan, frankly, it comes down to weight, the chassis, and the center of gravity. The sedans are usually lower, SUVs are higher.

The weight difference on an SUV is substantially more, usually, than a car. The sedans have a little bit better agility to maneuver around traffic than an SUV. I have been doing this for over 20 years, and quite often the first question that people always ask me is, "Well, wait a minute, an SUV is more likely to roll over."

More likely, yes, but almost 3% of car accidents are actually rollovers. And of those rollovers, just over 51% are SUVs. And I've been doing this for 20 years and I see over 500 cases a year, and I would agree with that statistic of about 3%. Roughly 15 to 20 car accidents of the 500 that I see are rollovers. And which one does better? The big one usually wins. What I'm seeing now is with these E SUVs, for example, the new Hummer that's coming out in 2023, that vehicle weighs 9,200-plus pounds. That basically is two Chevy Silverados or three Toyota Camrys. I'm going to tell you, that Hummer is going to win more often than not. So which one's safer? I'd rather be in the big one.