Ford SUV worst in rollover test
DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co.'s Explorer Sport Trac sport-utility is the most likely of 68 vehicles tested to roll over in a single-vehicle crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in its first such ranking.
The 2004 Explorer Sport Trac with two-wheel drive rolls over 35 percent of the time in crashes that don't involve another vehicle, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. The Sport Trac is an Explorer with a pickup bed instead of an extended interior passenger compartment and cargo area.
Rollover deaths in sport-utility vehicles last year rose 11 percent from 2002 and accounted for 55 percent of US fatal accidents. Rollovers occur in just 3 percent of crashes, according to the agency. The Explorer models are the best-selling sport-utility vehicles in the United States this year.
The agency rates vehicles from one to five stars. The Explorer Sport Trac has a two-star rating, the second worst.
"While we believe the NHTSA rating system has some value, we don't believe it is the most effective indicator of how a vehicle performs in the real world due to test variability," Ford spokeswoman Kristen Kinley said. "Accident- avoidance situations are such unpredictable events that it is very difficult to try to mirror that to real world performance."
Its rollover likelihood was 7 percentage points higher than the conventional two-wheel-drive Explorer and General Motors Corp.'s two-wheel-drive Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utility, the agency said.
