Yes they could. Drivers of flimsy cars should pay the higher premiums. I personally am tired of all the SUV bashing going on. I drive a smaller SUV that gets better MPG than many passenger cars. I drive a standard instead of automatic which makes a noticable difference there. I drive an SUV for many reasons. One being I need the room. In fact my only regret is not getting a bigger SUV. I play in a band and need to haul my gear on frequent occaisons. I do handyman work at home, so I need the cargo space to haul supplies and tools on many occasions. I have friends and ex-inlaws that live on dirt roads which are inaccessable to most cars during parts of the year. I like to go camping and when I camp it's not at some campground. That's not camping, thats just a hotel without room service or clean sheets. That means driving off road periodically. I live in an area which sees very heavy rain at least two or three times a year, often more. I am able to get places and to ferry friends and family through high water on those occasions. If I want to jump a curb I can. For me SUV's reprsent freedom. They give me the ability to do things. To not be stopped by much.
Personally I feel ALL cars of any type should be required to have a roll over bar. Roll overs are one of the biggest killers of any kind of vehicle. I've seen just as many sports cars flat up on their roof as I have seen SUVs. Vans are the most suceptable to roll overs. They are also generally worse at fuel efficiency than any other commonly used car except really high end sports cars and the dreadnaught SUVs. However they are not the evil SUV so nobody cares about the fuel efficiency of a sports car or a van. Even pickups which are almost identical to SUV's, often having the same frame, same engine, same fuel efficiency, height and safety records escape the SUV witchhunt.
But lets talk safety for a minute. SUVs ARE different and need to be driven differently than a sports car. Most people drive a car like a car reguardless of what they are driving and the weather conditions. Vans are prone to high wind, are not real good at cornering and have a tendancy to get out of control at high speed if you have a cross wind. Vans also have a high roll over rate. Pickups have light rear ends and are prone to fishtailing if there is nothing in the bed of the truck. They also do not corner like a sedan. SUVs share the same high center of balence pickups and vans do. SUVs drivers should take curves slower and be more aware of the wind than sedan drivers.
Sports cars generally corner extremely well but are normally have very low centers to give that cornering abilty. This means while driving a sports care you are almost blind in traffic and invisble to many cars. Sport's car's low clearence make them more vulnerable to road debris and more prone to lose control when hitting debris, huge potholes and other obstackes. They are poor off road vehicles. High water is death to a sports car. The same design that allows them to go fast makes them light enough that high winds can become just as dangerous to a sports car as to a van. Typcially traction in adverse weather is poorer with sports cars than heavier makes of vehicles. Sports cars shed size to gain speed and fuel economy. This makes them more vulnerable in crashes.
Light economy cars are the most dangerous in my opinion. They are typically light enough that wind will be a problem, espeically on bridges or when there is snow, ice or heavy rain on the road. They sacrafice weight for fuel economy which makes them more prone to damage in accidents. Often economy cars with thier small size are difficult to see by many other drivers. Unlike faster sports cars and SUVs economy cars tend to be underpowered so they cannot get out of the way as easily. Economy cars are often hazards when entering busy freeways. Unable to get up to highway speed on the on ramp, especially uphill onramps they enter freeways at unsafe speeds. They are as vulnerable to road debris as sports cars but do not have the cornering ability of a sports car. I see as many people get in trouble taking a corner in economy cars as SUVs. Economy cars do not typically have the cargo space of SUVs, Vans, Pickups or even sedans. This sometimes requires multiple trips or the usage of multiple cars when ferrying loads or people. Which of course wipes out all of that feul efficiency that people are so worried about. A loaded economy car is a fuel efficiency nightmare. Already underpowered but now strained by the load it pumps out more pollution than it's higher powered bretheren under similer conditions. Stop and go traffic is when a car produces the most pollution. Accelerating is the next. So to compensate for the lack of power economy cars wind up using gas and pumping out pollution almost to the levels of thier more villified brothers.
Motorcyles are THE most fuel efficient gas powered vehicles in common use today. They are also the least safe. So if fuel efficiency is carried out to it's logical extreme get ready to ride a motorcyle. If SUV bashers have thier way and force SUVs off the market the next logical step is to force cars off the market. Remove cars from the roads and motorcylces get a whole lot safer. The very same arguements presented by SUV bashers are even more true in Motorcyle vrs car collisions. Motorcyles are MUCH more fuel efficient. They would ease parking problems and take up less road space. Since SUV bashers have no problem trying to force other people to adopt their lifestyle what defense would they have against somebody making them adopt a biker's lifestyle?
Luxory sedans are not noted for fuel efficiency, carrying capacity and sometimes not even performance. They tend to be one of the safer vehicles on the road when it comes to crash worthyness. They are heavy enough that winds rarely affect them. They typically have enough power that they can get out of the way and are large enough they are typically easy to see. So the trade off is price and fuel efficiency. Cargo capacity some luxory sedans can equal small SUVs.
Mid sized sedans are a comprimise between luxory sudans and economy cars. They typcially weigh enough that wind and traction are not big problems except on ice. They have some get up and go so they are not complete hazards to traffic as economy cars can often be. They still lack the zip of a good SUV or sports car. They will corner reasonably well. They often lack significant cargo space however. So more miles driving or less cargo. Safety wise they score inbetween. They do not have the tough frames found in pickups and SUVs. They are lower than many vehicles. So there are plusses and minuses.
So realistically all cars have safety issues of one sort or another. For me driving a mid sized sedan or economy car it would actually increase my gas usage and put me on the road far more often with more trips. I would be unable to carry even my gear much less part of the rest of the band's gear to gigs and such were I to drive a sedan or economy car. I could not even fit some of my gear in a sedan. I would have to wait out high water till it went down and if trapped in it I would be out a car. When making trips to things like Ren faires we would have to take two vehicles. During a recent hurricane evacuation I'd had to have left more of our stuff. I could not visit a few friends in thier homes. Camping would require me to rent an SUV or jeep to get far enough off road that I would feel my car was safe while I hiked in to a camping spot. A sedan would cost me more money to operate, limit what I do and cause me many headaches. That is my lifestyle. For me an SUV is what works well. SUVs are not for everybody. Some people have everything delivered to them. Never go off road and have time to spare to wait for high water to go down. They can replace thier car if it gets flooded out. Then for them something else is whats right. Some people, all they can afford is an economy car. It gets them too and from work. Without it they would be dependent on others and very likely unable to support themselves. So the lower safety issue is meaningless to them. A risk they must take. What I find appalling is people attempting to foist thier lifestyle on others. The SUV bashers are the worst about it. They choose to drive cars that are not as safe. Half the effort and money spend on roll overs could have gotten roll over bars installed in EVERY car. THAT would make ALL cars safer. If they stripped every SUV out of the country they would not make a noticable dent in gas consumption. I drove pickups before I bought my SUV. When I bought my SUV I looked at Pickups, SUVs and Sports cars. I'd get the same gas milage with a pickup or a sports car as I do with my SUV. All taking my SUV would accomplish would be to aggravate my life and increase my gas usage. I do not want to live like the SUV bashers. I do not have the apparently abundent funds or complete lack of a life they do. Drive what is right for you. Preventing accidents is going to do more for safety than SUV bashing could.
The #1 cause of accidents is not paying attention to the road. It has nothing to do with what you drive. The second most common cause of accidents is selfishness. The complete lack of concern for what your actions will do to other drivers. Cutting somebody off, sudden turns (this especially hits home with bikers who are killed in large numbers by people making sudden turns without warning), running red lights, not accelerating to highway speed when entering a freeway, driving slow in the fast lane, etc. All of these actions cause accidents. Some of them unfortunatly are misclassified. The poor guy five cars down who had looked away a second before the four cars in front of him had to stand on thier brakes because of an idiot jumping in the lane doing 20 mph less than the flow of traffic is given the ticket or goes to the hospital or even dies as the car(s) behind him plow into him. The cause of the accident drives blissfully away often completely unaware that there was an accident much less the people they might have killed. A newspaper printed a summery of all fatal accidents in the city one year. A third of the dead were killed in pile ups caused by not watching the road or by people cutting into a lane of traffic going far too slowly. Of the roll overs, a third of them were vans caught in high winds. Most of the rest were caused by collisions.
You want to save lives then give tickets for things which actually cause accidents. Design freeways to enhance traffic flow not constrict it. Keep traffic moving. Congested roads were the scene of a disproportionate number of accidents. On a congested road you have no where to go. Vision is limited and if you maintain a safe distance somebody will cut into it. Plain and simple congestion is dangerous. You could put tanks in the hands of half the drivers in the US and it would not help. Awareness and courtesy will save ten times more lives than any vehicle redesign. Add roll bars to all vehicles. That will save lives. Limit congestion. Removing rush hour would save more gas and reduce pollution more than anything other than taking a signifcant portion of drivers off the road and making them walk or ride a bike. Remember public transportation comes with heavy fuel and pollution costs as well.
