Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 2, 1994                   TAG: 9411020045
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AIR BAGS INFLATE CONSUMERS' CONCERN FOR SAFE VEHICLES

What's taken safety to a new level of awareness is air bags. The devices inflate in severe frontal crashes to cushion the occupant from steering wheel, dashboard or windshield.

"The air bag overshadows any other safety issues 1,000-to-1," George Pelton, owner of First Team Auto Mall in the Roanoke Valley, said.

Parents shopping for a car for a daughter or son almost always want bags, he said.

"No one ever asks about the five-mile bumper," Pelton said.

Some manufacturers are putting five-mile bumpers on their cars to prevent a lot of the visible damage in 5 mph impacts.

Air bags are more meaningful, however, because they directly relate to saving lives, as suggested by a recent study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Driver-side air bags were in 10 of the 12 passenger vehicles with the lowest driver death rate in the survey, which was based on data collected from 1989-93 on vehicles made in 1988-92.

Driver deaths in front crashes are about 24 percent lower in cars with air bags than in similar cars with a seat belt only, the institute states in its "Shopping for a Safer Car" guide.

The popularity of air bags made it impossible to produce enough to add to all vehicles at once. Dual air bags have been added to most cars and passenger vans; driver-side air bags are standard on most 1995 utility vehicles and pickups.

Bags or not, though, you never can be totally safe if you travel in a motor vehicle, said Brian O'Neill, president of the institute.

True, some vehicles are safer than others. But some vehicles also are driven more carefully than others.

The institute, which is backed by insurance companies, in October released its best and worst cars based on driver death rate.

The vehicles were rated using an index in which 100 was average and represented 1.1 driver deaths per 10,000 vehicles. This means that the three pickup-truck models with a 200 index on the chart accompanying this column recorded 2.2 driver deaths per 10,000 vehicles.

But charts don't tell it all, O'Neill said.

``It's impossible to determine which vehicle is `safest,''' he said.

Vehicle size influences death rate, but so do differences in drivers and vehicle use. Also, death rates vary not only among vehicle size and body style groups but also within them.

Among small four-door cars, for example, the Volkswagen Jetta's driver-death rate is only one-third as high as the Ford Escort's and Geo Metro's, the institute found.

A variety of factors need to be considered when shopping for safer vehicles, O'Neill said.

First, consider the vehicle size and available safety features, he suggests. Then look at information on death rates, insurance injury claim frequencies and crash-test results for vehicles of the size and type in which you're interested.

If you would like a copy of the shopping guide and some other information from the institute, send a self-addressed, stamped legal-size envelope to Safer Cars, Box 1420, Arlington, Va. 22210.