Gov. Baldacci dodged serious injury during a highway crash, but his car doesn’t deserve the credit.

I don’t care what type of chariot the governor of Maine arrives in.

Important politicians used to travel in Lincolns and Cadillacs. Today, big, dark SUVs are favored, and that’s OK by me.

I will, however, take issue with the idea that Gov. John Baldacci was “saved” in his rollover accident last week by the weight and girth of his state-owned land yacht.

More importantly, I hope comments about the governor’s crash don’t lead ordinary people to think they are safer in a truck-like SUV.

It just isn’t so.

As a class of vehicles, SUVs handle more poorly than sedans, they do more poorly in swerve maneuvers and they are far, far more likely to roll over. Government tests show that SUVs are almost three times more likely to roll in an accident than a passenger car.

They are, for a host of reasons, actually more dangerous than large passenger sedans, particularly when steered hard in accident avoidance maneuvers.

How can that be?

If you really want to examine the subject, pick up a copy of Keith Bradshear’s excellent book, “High and Mighty: The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way.”

Bradshear, an auto industry reporter for many years in Detroit for the New York Times, details how the family sedan, station wagon and van have been supplanted by the family SUV, at the expense of the environment and public safety.

The biggest profits in the auto industry have always come from selling the biggest, heaviest vehicles possible. When auto emission standards began to limit the number of big sedans automakers could build, the challenge became to convince consumers to drive light trucks rather than cars.

Light trucks, the category that includes SUVs, were exempt not only from tougher emission standards, but many key safety provisions as well.

It was a tough sell, but artificially low gasoline prices and sophisticated saturation TV advertising has done the job.

Starting at the frame level, SUVs and cars are different. Cars have unibody designs, which absorb impacts in accidents. Light trucks are on a rigid frame and do not. Cars are designed with “crumple zones” that absorb energy in a crash; SUVs are not.

Remember, it’s not the collision that kills people. It’s the sudden stop. Vehicle body and frame designs that absorb that energy are inherently safer.

Generally, bigger is better only when very large SUVs run into very small cars. Their bumpers are so high that they tend to ride up over small cars. Worse, in a broadside collision, their bumpers ride up over the door beams in smaller cars and into the passenger compartment.

Good for the SUV owners. Bad for them when they are sued by the estates of the people they killed in the small cars.

But it is the handling characteristics of SUVs that make them the most dangerous. They brake poorly, they do not swerve well and, worst of all, they tend to “trip.” A guardrail, an embankment, a smaller car, a broadside slid or spin all tend to send SUVs into rollovers, one of the most likely causes of vehicle fatalities.

Politicians have been quick to praise the driver of the governor’s car as well as his Chevy Suburban. He simply had the bad luck of hitting a patch of ice, and the governor was saved by his heavy vehicle. Hey, accidents happen.

No way. Roads everywhere were slippery that morning. A veteran state trooper should have known it was time to slow down. Instead, the governor’s driver was passing other cars at the time of the accident.

Here’s my unofficial analysis of the governor’s crash: It’s 6:05 a.m. The governor is running late for a 6:15 a.m. appointment he will never make on time. His driver is going too fast for conditions, lulled into a sense of security by the size of his vehicle and its four-wheel-drive features.

He must brake suddenly, the vehicle swerves, the driver is unable to control the top-heavy SUV and it begins to spin, goes over an embankment, tips and slides.

Had he been in a large sedan, would the outcome have been different? Better braking. Better handling. Less likely to spin and far less likely to tip and roll.

In any evasive maneuver, I’d much rather have been low and close to the road in a nice, big sedan.

The governor was lucky all right. Lucky his SUV didn’t kill him.

Rex Rhoades’ e-mail address is:

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