True or false: If you drive a four-wheel-drive vehicle in the winter, you're less likely to have an accident.
Surprisingly, the answer isn't necessarily "true," despite all the hype from carmakers and dealers. Driving experts, insurance companies, police officers and federal safety authorities have begun voicing serious doubts about whether vehicles that distribute power to all four wheels are always safer for winter driving.Four-wheel drive does give vehicles added traction, helping them hold the road in slick conditions. But when it comes to stopping, four-wheel-drive vehicles have no advantage over two-wheel-drive vehicles. And any car with ice under all four wheels is going to have trouble.
The problem with four-wheel-drive vehicles tends to be the people who drive them. "These people have it in their heads that they're driving Sherman tanks," says James Crowe, a traffic-accident investigator with the Denver police. Detective Crowe, who once owned a four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruiser himself, adds, "As soon as snow hits the ground, they go speeding up the highway, and then two minutes later they're rolled over or skidding like crazy."
Indeed, Steve Caissie, a 29-year-old computer technician from Boston, says he thought having four-wheel drive made him invincible. Last month, he was zipping along a snowy New Hampshire highway in his red, four-wheel-drive Mit-su-bishi Eclipse GSX. For most of the trip, he didn't have to slow down because of the vehicle's superior traction.
But eventually, a car ahead of him stopped. When Caissie tried to stop, too, his car slid into the center lane, smacked the side of a truck and bounced back into the left lane. "When you're in a four-wheel drive, there is this sense of power and overconfidence that makes you forget everything else," says Caissie, who wasn't injured but whose car suffered minor damage. "You really don't realize your limitations until you hit something."
Safety officials and the Highway Loss Data Institute, which represents insurance companies, say there aren't any firm figures linking drivers of four-wheel-drive vehicles to a disproportionate num-ber of accidents. But there are now 15.6 million four-wheel-drive vehicles on American roads, and such models as the Toyota 4Runner four-door wagon, the Geo Tracker 4X4 and the Mazda MPV 4X4 have had worse than average injury and collision insurance claims, insurance officials say.
Car companies have even started to caution drivers not to believe all the hype about four-wheel-drive vehicles' invincibility in winter. "Obviously, four-wheel drive is a better system in terms of traction on slippery surfaces, but it doesn't make you bullet-proof," says Alex Tsigdinos, a spokesman for Chrysler Corp. "Sound judgment is still the best guarantee of safety."
George Parker, the associate administrator for research and development at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has ordered a study to examine how drivers' behavior is affected when their vehicles are equipped with special technology. "When drivers don't have all the normal driving cues, they have no way of knowing whether they're turning a corner too fast or if the road is too icy," Parker says. "The vehicle may not signal danger in the same way as a car without the added equipment."
Scott Stone, a sophomore at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, recalls being terrorized by the overconfident driver of a four-wheel-drive Mazda pickup. Stone, 18, was driving his 1982 Datsun 280ZX down a snowy hill. As he neared the bottom, he saw the pickup in his rear-view mirror. "Everyone else was trying to slow down, but Mr. Four-Wheel Drive just kept coming until he took out my right taillight," Stone says. "I guess he thought the snow was a joke."
Psychologists say part of the attraction of four-wheel drive is the thrill of possessing a vehicle that will let you go just about anywhere. "Cars amplify a person's submerged needs, the need for strength, adventure, omnipotence," says Marc Schoen, a psychologist at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.