IIHS Demands Regulated SUV Bumpers

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety announced today that it has petitioned the government — namely the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — to regulate bumpers on light trucks, SUVs and vans in the same way it does cars. There are no regulations on these vehicles currently; they can even be sold without bumpers.

IIHS reasons that because the bumpers on many SUVs are higher off the ground than car bumpers, they cause more damage in SUV-to-car accidents. In IIHS testing, the damage to a test car — a Hyundai Sonata — ranged from $3,891 to $4,737 when taking on SUVs like the Hummer H3, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Mitsubishi Endeavor. The one SUV with lower bumpers, the Ford Explorer shown top, caused a third of the damage on the Sonata.

Now, this isn’t all about safety; IIHS is primarily looking out for the insurance industry. It stated that between 2005 and 2007, the first three SUVs mentioned above had some of the highest insurance losses in regard to the vehicles they collided with. The Explorer had a lower-than-average loss rate. Even if insurance companies save money with new regulations, though, so will consumers, thanks to lower repair costs and lower insurance premiums.