Russ Rader Quotations

There are more rollover deaths now than there used to be. And that's entirely due to more SUVs on the road.

Yes, men drive more, but our studies show that they're by far the riskier, more dangerous drivers.

There are two things working against young drivers: inexperience and immaturity. To the extent that you can give teens more time to develop their driving skills and the judgment to counteract their lack of experience the better.

We had a very difficult time working with Burger King,

Most truck and SUV bumpers are purely decorative.

Obviously, a Pontiac Firebird is generally going to be driven in a much different way than a Honda minivan,

There is a misconception that older drivers are somehow a menace out on the road, and that really is not borne out by the facts. Thirty-year-olds kill far more people on the roads than 70-year-olds.

We look at this from the standpoint that the more parental involvement the better because too many teens end up driving in risky situations, even with graduated driving laws in many states.

It is important that parents enforce strict rules about driving: no nighttime driving, no driving around with friends in the car. These are the riskiest situations.

SUVs are absolutely not a good choice for a teenager, ... The bottom line is you don't have to buy a tank to get good safety.

Typically rollovers represent a small percentage of crashes but are disproportionately high in the number of deaths because they're so lethal.

There are a lot of these technologies in the offing and it's still too early to know how beneficial they're going to be.

When you have a teen passenger in the vehicle with a teen driver, the risk of a crash is twice as high. If you have two or more teen passengers in a vehicle the risk can be five times as high.

You can never repeal the laws of physics, and a smaller, lighter vehicle is always at a disadvantage no matter how many safety features are built into it.

Fatal crash involvements for 16-year-olds fell 26 percent from 1993 to 2003 as states began to enact graduated licensing laws. But this has not solved the problem by any means. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers. The later they start driving, the better.

It would clearly help if the driving age were raised. But it never has gained any traction in most places to simply raise the age.

Safety should not be a luxury that only comes standard on high-end models. If side airbags aren't included in a popular option package, most people won't get them.

Safety should not be a luxury that only comes standard on high-end models, ... If side airbags aren't included in a popular option package, most people won't get them.

This is a really good resource for consumers who want to find out what's been recalled by a manufacturer but don't know where to look.

They're more likely than younger drivers to die in their crashes because of their fragility and their age. They're more likely to die in a crash a younger person would survive.

The research is clear that raising speed limits costs lives. People need to weigh the benefits of getting places faster versus the fact that more people will die in crashes.

It's acceptable with its standard side airbags on the side test and also good in the head test, and that's a relatively inexpensive car.

Ford knows it has a problem with the Fusion and is working to go and fix it and we expect to retest it later this year.

That, in and of itself, makes it impossible to do a before and after analysis.

The biggest potential from the standpoint of safety researchers is that we would be able to get much more extensive and potentially more accurate information of what happens in real crashes.

They are very effective. Research around the world shows that they cut down on speeding.

These numbers are useless in doing a red light camera study.

These vehicles are among the cream of the crop for mid-sized cars in terms of safety performance.

Once again, these tests show the importance of side-impact bags. In a head-on crash you have the entire front end of the vehicle to crush and help protect you. In a side crash, there's very little there to absorb the impact, so you are much better protected with side air bags.

In 2004 we went and observed student parking lots and half the cars were cars the institute does not recommend,

I don't think their use is widespread enough yet to study.

Graduated licensing has been the only thing that has worked.