A Lethal Combination

Debbie Sausville, right, Lauren Sausville's stepmother, says the Explorer was "too much car" for the teenager. At left is Lauren's father, Pete, and stepsister Shannon Casey. Speed, beer and inexperience were called factors in the crash. (Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)

The other six girls suffered minor injuries. Lynam, in the front passenger seat, died.

"If Laura were in a car, I don't think this would have happened," said her father, Terence, of Alexandria. He said his daughter, a student at T.C. Williams High School, drove a 1992 Honda Civic "that couldn't go that fast, and you couldn't get seven kids into it."

The driver on the day of the accident, he said, normally drove a Toyota Corolla. But her parents were out of town, and she took the Escalade. She was charged with reckless driving and traveling with too many passengers. Virginia law prohibits drivers 17 and younger from carrying more than one passenger.

In the weeks since the crash, Lynam has scrolled through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Web site, www.safercar.gov, where the agency's rollover rankings give 2002 Escalade models two and three stars, meaning they have a 20 to 40 percent chance of rolling over in a crash.

In January 2003, NHTSA Administrator Jeffrey W. Runge, a former emergency room physician, raised a furor among automakers when he told an industry gathering in Detroit that he wouldn't buy his child "a two-star rollover vehicle if it was the last one on earth." Runge, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment last week.

Shosteck, of the auto trade group, said, "We're now on the third generation of SUVs, [which] are wider and lower to the ground, with bumper heights that match up better with passenger cars. "But no technology is going to replace a safe, responsible and belted driver."

In one of this school year's first teen driving fatalities involving an SUV in the Washington area, Kevin Anthony Nelson, 18, of Temple Hills was driving on Allentown Road in Fort Washington on Aug. 23 when his 2001 Nissan Pathfinder collided with a car making a turn, police said. Like nearly three-quarters of people killed in rollover crashes, Nelson was not wearing a seat belt. The Pathfinder flipped, and Nelson was killed, according to investigators. Prince George's police said the investigation is continuing.

Sarkis George Nazarian Jr., 16, of Potomac died Nov. 13 on Travilah Road in Montgomery County when he lost control of his 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee, ran off the road in the rain and hit a tree. Nazarian, who was known as Sako, was not wearing a seat belt, was speeding and had alcohol in his system, police said.

Julie Rochman, senior vice president of public affairs for the American Insurance Association, said young drivers are attracted to SUVs. But, she said, "what the teenager wants to drive is not necessarily the best vehicle for them to drive. You want something that's going to be forgiving."

In a study done by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, researchers found that a loss of driver control -- common in teen accidents -- was the leading cause of SUV rollovers.

The study was funded by a maker of electronic stability control devices, which sense a loss of control and automatically stabilize the vehicle. The study found that the devices could help stop "as many as half" of rollovers, said John Woodrooffe, head of the Transportation Safety Analysis Division at the institute.

"But if [young drivers] are going to the used-car lot for SUVs," Woodrooffe said, "they're not going to get the benefit."

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.