When are we finally going to do something about these SUVs? From the Washington Post:
The many factors in the crash that killed 16-year-old Lauren Sausville on Dec. 3 came together in a split second, on a curve that would claim her life.
Hurrying to catch up to a friend on Colchester Road in Fairfax County that night, police say, her vehicle’s excessive speed, the darkness, the beer she’d had, her inexperience as a driver increased the odds of a crash. And then there was the 1999 Ford Explorer she drove, a sport-utility vehicle that her stepmother, Debbie Sausville, called “too much car” for a 5-foot-4 high school junior who weighed barely 100 pounds.
Missing the curve, Sausville rode up the embankment on the right. At that moment, crash investigators say, an experienced driver might still have maintained control. But Sausville had had her license only three weeks. She swerved, and the SUV flipped onto the driver’s side and slid, in a hail of sparks, into her friend’s waiting car.
The friend escaped with minor injuries. Sausville, pushed by her vehicle’s crumpling roof into the back seat, died instantly.
“You make a hard steering input, and that’s what SUVs do,” said Sgt. Pat Wimberly, who heads the Fairfax County police crash reconstruction unit. “They require an extra level of experience and maturity to operate.”
Sausville, like most new drivers, “didn’t have that,” he said.
No, she just had beer.
