High and Mighty.

Keith Bradsher PublicAffairs www.publicaffairsbooks.com 464 pp., $28

SUVs are everywhere you look in America, perhaps the biggest fashion statement since blue jeans. Former New York Times Detroit bureau chief Keith Bradsher shines a glaring light on this phenomenon, and the view is not pretty.

SUVs are at best a paradox and at worst one of the most successful scams of the 20th century. They present the facade of safety while endangering their occupants and others. Their "eco"-image is a mirage that has lured otherwise environmentally conscious baby boomers to buy polluting gas guzzlers. Driving a full-size SUV instead of a midsize car for a year uses as much excess energy as leaving the refrigerator door open for six years. They have become the family car of a generation, while hardly reflecting family values.

As a lawyer who has spent the last decade representing families destroyed by SUV instability, I read this book as if finding a friend who finally understands. Bradsher exposes the SUV mythology: They do not just roll over too easily; they handle awkwardly, brake poorly, provide little if any more crash protection than large cars, and inflict disproportionate injury upon those they hit.

As Bradsher points out, "The worst possible situation is a shift toward vehicles that perform badly in single-vehicle crashes but compensate by obliterating other automobiles in multiple-vehicle crashes." For every Explorer driver whose life is saved in a two-car collision because he or she chose an Explorer over a large car, five drivers are killed in vehicles struck by Explorers. The Explorer driver's small safety advantage in two-car collisions is erased by the increased rollover risk in single-car accidents.

SUVs are dangerous in part because, despite being a profit bonanza (production at a single Ford SUV plant in 1998 exceeded global sales of Nike, nearly equaled those of McDonald's, and generated a $2.4 billion after-tax profit), many have been developed on the cheap--by awkwardly merging a passenger compartment body with an unyielding, high, pickup-truck frame. Europeans cannot figure out why Americans spend so much to drive these awkward boxes when they could buy high-performance vehicles for the same amount.

The answer lies in an image crafted in Detroit. As explained by Ford's Explorer product planner, "These customers might have given up their childhood dreams of becoming firefighters, police officers, or superheroes and had instead become parents with desk jobs and oversized mortgages. But they told Ford researchers that SUVs made them feel like they were still carefree, adventurous spirits who could drop everything and head for the great outdoors at a moment's notice if they really wanted to." They did not need four-wheel drive; what counted was the fantasy of what they might do on vacation, and the ability to show people that they really were as bold as they still liked to see themselves.

High and Mighty is not a rehash of 60 Minutes and 20/20 exposes of SUV rollover risks, although it covers the subject well. Nor is it a compilation of Bradsher's New York Times articles, though it draws heavily on his sources and access to industry leaders. Rather, it is a history of an automotive evolution that serves as a metaphor for America's more-is-better approach to consumerism. It is the only book-length treatment of this phenomenon, as far as I know, that explains how SUVs came to rule the American road--and the reasons are not what you would expect. This is not a story of American individualists being drawn to rugged-looking vehicles, but rather of impressionable consumers herded to them by automakers because tax, energy, and international trade laws create incentives to sell SUVs rather than passenger cars.

Like a good litigator, Bradsher is a storyteller by trade. High and Mighty is fact-laden and footnoted, but it does not stagnate or choke on details and documents. It moves easily between profiles of colorful auto-industry personalities, news-making events like the Ford-Firestone debacle, and criticisms of laws that have inadvertently created incentives to sell SUVs. It is entertaining, even funny at times, especially in its description of SIN marketing designed to appeal to "reptilian" instincts.

The book is not a litigation guide, and those who have been involved actively in rollover litigation may be disappointed at its lack of detail. But they will not be disappointed by any lack of conviction. Bradsher's premise is that

   SUVs represent the biggest menace to public
   safety and the environment that the auto industry
   has produced since the bad old days of the
   1960s, before the advent of most safety and pollution
   control devices in cars. They have already
   killed thousands of Americans who would still
   be alive today if the automakers had sold cars
   instead. They will kill many thousands more in
   the coming years. In the nation's homes and
   hospitals, they have left a trail of people suffering
   unnecessarily from rollover-induced paralysis
   or pollution-induced respiratory difficulties.
   Perhaps the saddest part ... is that it has been so
   unnecessary.

Bradsher leaves us with some hope--in the form of newer, safer, and more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles--and some proposed solutions, in the form of policy recommendations that would remove the unwarranted tax, insurance, and fuel efficiency breaks for SUVs. But he is not optimistic. Most of the 20 million SUVs on the nation's roads are less than five years old, including three-quarters of the super-jumbo variety like the Ford Excursion. Their current drivers are affluent baby boomers, who will unload them in droves in the coming years to buy or lease newer vehicles, flooding the market with used SUVs.

"Falling prices will make them more attractive to younger drivers and drivers with poor safety records--including drunk drivers," Bradsher writes. "The only thing more frightening for traffic safety experts than a drunk or young person behind the wheel of a new SIN is a drunk or young person behind the wheel of an old SIN with failing brakes and other maintenance problems."

Stuart Ollanik practices with Gilbert, Frank, Ollanik, & Komyatte in Arvada, Colorado.