My family just spend the long weekend in a cabin up in the Sierras, and when we left our Honda Civic got stuck in three feet of snow and we had to install chains and push it to get it to the main road. The whole way down the mountain, I looked at the SUV drivers smugly blazing past me on the highway and I wondered if I wasn't somehow sacrificing my child's safety by driving her around in a sedan. "Now they feel justified in owning those gas-guzzling monstrosities," my wife said when a gigantic Nissan Armada roared past us through the snow.

But a study published yesterday in the January issue of Pediatrics indicates that SUVs are actually no safer for kids than regular passenger cars. Despite an overwhelming public perception that SUVs are safer for family driving, the new report shows the bigger vehicles are actually no better at preventing children's injuries in accidents. The study showed that whatever safety benefits which come from increased size and weight are counterbalanced by the danger of rolling over common to most SUVs. The study's co-author, Dr. Dennis Durbin, says, "The message for parents is that SUVs are no safer, and that they should know the importance of ensuring that their children are properly restrained for their age on every trip in the car."

I'm pretty sure those kids in the SUVs on the mountain were safer under those circumstances, but driving through snowy mountains is something my family does once a year. It's good to know we don't need to drive an ugly, gas-guzzling SUV all the time to keep our kid safe.