What to do with SUVs? (Comment).

WHO could have imagined Washington's top auto safety regulator arguing that sport utility vehicles aren't safe enough and then warning automakers to make the necessary design changes before the government orders them made?

Is this coming from the bigger-is-always-better Bush White House?

Last week's comments by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration head Jeffrey W. Runge say a lot about the growing crusade against SUVs. "The thing I don't understand is people, when they choose to buy a vehicle, they might go sit in it and say, 'Gee, I feel safe," Runge told the Wall Street Journal. "Well, sorry, but you know gut instinct is great for a lot of stuff, but it's not very good for buying a safe automobile."

He was mostly referring to the rise in fatalities from SUV rollovers. An SUV occupant, Runge said, is three times as likely to die in such an accident than an occupant in a passenger car.

For those who happen to be on the other side of these monsters, Runge's remarks were not especially reassuring, at least in the near term. They only point up the growing "us vs. them" nature of the SUV debate and offer scant specifics on how to fix a health problem so far too easy to ignore.

Trouble is, there is no easy fix. Runge's allusion to government mandates is unlikely to fly -- despite the NHTSA actually having the power to enforce vehicle design changes -- and even if he were to somehow force Detroit's hand, it would be years before any improvements ever see pavement. Last year alone, 4 million SUVs were sold in the U.S. -- and millions more are on the road. Short of outright confiscation, they're likely to be around for awhile. Lincoln Navigators are not like cigarettes - you just don't toss them into the trash, no matter how hazardous they happen to be.

Meanwhile, the marketplace is likely to be of only limited help because, let's face it, folks remain hooked on their SUVs. They not only offer additional room but, Runge's concerns notwithstanding, SUV drivers are bound to be safer in certain kinds of collisions than folks traveling in wimpy passenger cars. As for the prospect of higher fuel prices, don't expect any motoring epiphanies; adjusted for inflation, the cost of gasoline has remained remarkably stable for decades and barring a sudden crisis in the oil markets, it's likely to stay that way.

And yet. the SUV is living on borrowed time.

I say that intuitively because I'm old enough to remember my father's old Buick Riviera and Lincoln Continental -- veritable boats that eventually fell out of favor, just as the SUVs surely will. In cars, as in skirts or food or vacation locales, styles inevitably change.

Over the next few years, automakers increasingly will phase out truck-chassis SUVs in favor of so-called crossover vehicles that are smaller and provide a lower center of gravity less resistant to rollovers. The box-like Honda Element and Toyota Scion xB, both aimed at younger buyers turned off by their parents' behemoths, could mark a change in consumer sentiment.

Also expect stepped-up attention to safety features, including side-curtain airbags becoming standard equipment on all models. Not because the car companies are such good guys, but because, ever so gradually, consumers will start to demand it -- even at a price.

For the moment, however, lives will continue to be lost, big time, no matter how many government studies or regulator warnings restate the obvious -- that SUVs need to be off the road.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.