Remember all of the outcry because Rumsfeld wasn't getting better armored Humvees to the troops? Well, it turns out that the new "up armored" Humvees in Iraq are apparently killing more soldiers in rollovers than they're saving with the new armor:

...serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.

Duhhhhh!

Increasing the vehicle mass, and coincidentally raising the center of mass, is obviously going to decrease its stability in turns. Didn't anyone consider this when they came up with the design? People forget that this vehicle was a replacement for the jeep, not the tank.

This is a classic engineering safety trade, but soldiers killed in auto accidents don't get all the press that the ones killed with IEDs do. That doesn't fit the template that we're losing the war, because they were killed by media outcry, not terrorists.

That doesn't fit the template that we're losing the war, because they were killed by media outcry, not terrorists.

Never heard that kinda line before. Awesome.

Increasing the vehicle mass, and coincidentally raising the center of mass, is obviously going to decrease its stability in turns.

And remember that these are American designed humvees, there's precious little turn stability to begin with.

THe other thing to keep in mind is that there have been farmers in that area for 4000 years, which means an awful lot of irrigation ditches.
A large number of the "rollover" fatalities are where the vehicle winds up upside down at the bottom of the 15' ditch, in 3 feet of water.

And you don't buckle yourself in a HumVee in a combat zone because you might need to get out in a hurry. so a good part of the time, seat belts are out.

This appears to be an article which ACTUALLY says that the person referenced believes that the armour is causing more deaths. It actually fails to present any useful data.

This is a regular problem with Blog links.

The statistic they appear to not include in the data is the deaths through IED attack on Humvees. It would be more educational for us to see what those were before the change in armour compared and then also an actual table showing the standard traffic accident rate.

Without this, your link and your comments are utterly pointless.