PARIS, France (AFP) - Owners of 4X4 vehicles, already ensconced at the top of the green hitlist for their contribution to global warming, are the least safe drivers on the road, a study suggests. Behavioural scientists watched 1,196 drivers of cars and 4X4s, which are also called sport utility vehicles (SUVs), on motorways in New Zealand. They monitored the drivers to see whether they drove with their hands at the "ten-minutes-to-two" position, considered the sign of a safe and alert driver. SUV drivers were 55 per cent likelier than drivers of regular cars to drive with just one hand on the top of the wheel. "Being in large, taller vehicles, SUV drivers believe they are safer and possess a lower level of perceived risk than car drivers," the British weekly New Scientist quotes Jared Thomas, of the Opus Behavioural Sciences Lab in Wellington, as saying. In 2006, a British study found that nearly one in 12 of SUV drivers in London used their mobile phones while at the wheel, a rate four times that of other drivers. Nearly 20 per cent of SUV drivers did not wear a seat belt, compared to 15 per cent among other drivers. In 2005, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) demanded that SUVs carry a health warning because of their danger to pedestrians. The risk of fatality when an SUV collides with a pedestrian is nearly twice that of a similar event involving a passenger car, mainly because of the massive injuries inflicted by the high, blunt bonnet (US hood) of a typical 4X4. Reprinted from jamaicaobserver.com