Trends are noticeable that the European car fleet is changing rapidly towards a higher diversity of vehicles on the roads. On the high end of the scale larger and heavier automobiles, such as Multi Purpose Vehicles (MPV’s) and Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV’s) take a larger share than before.

This paper shows the results from a study done on SUV accidents. The crash involvement and behaviour of Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV) was analysed. The analyses were based on a review of Dutch national statistics and in-depth studies of SUV accidents in The Netherlands and of passenger cars in Europe (the EACS project). Also comparisons were made with actual numbers of the car fleet of the vehicles types, so that exposure rates can be included. Accidents of vehicles in the above-described categories will also be compared with each other.

The national statistics and the in-depth analysis were compared and it was shown that the studies point in the same direction. It can be concluded that SUV’s are significantly more aggressive against vulnerable road users. In this study no difference is found between heavy passenger cars and SUVs. SUVs are about as heavy as the average full-size passenger car. So the same mass difference occurs between passenger car classes (e.g. full-size and small cars). Although the bumper height is about 20% higher compared to passenger cars, this difference could not directly be related to an increase in injury severity in this study due to the lack of data.