SUV’s show highest trends in traffic fatalities says NHTSA Study

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) report on traffic fatalities shows the following trends:

While the figure of 42,642 people killed in 2006 may seem excessive, it’s 2% down from 2005. The number of people who sustained injuries in motor vehicle accidents in 2006 is 2,575,000, and it’s down 4.6% from 2005.

Occupants killed and injured in passenger vehicles declined for just about every type of vehicle with the exception of SUVs. Also worthy of note is that SUVs had the largest increase in registrations.

While “occupants killed” figures declined by 3.3% overall, and by 3.8% for passenger cars, the SUV rate increased by 1.6%

Passenger vehicle occupants killed in rollover crashes went down 1.6%, but for vans the figure dropped 24%. On the other hand, the figure for pickups went up by 1.6%

More than half of all passenger vehicle occupants killed were NOT wearing seatbelts!