By DAN ACKMAN

In the last 10 years more than 400,000 people have died on our nation's highways. Lately, though, the attention has been focused on just 101 fatalities, the number "linked to" Firestone tires. The Firestone recall may someday teach us about auto safety. But for now, it proves even more how Americans focus on small risks while ignoring larger ones, and how the press can inadvertently create a crisis simply by reporting it.

While Congress and the media focus on tires, the much more deadly problem of sport-utility vehicle rollover crashes rolls on, with much less scrutiny.

Firestone manufactured 14.5 million 15-inch Wilderness AT, radial ATX and ATX II tires, which became original equipment on the Ford Explorer in 1990. No one noticed a significant tread-separation problem until the late 1990s, though exactly when it became large enough to invite inquiry is in dispute.

What is clear is that the number of tire-separation reports to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration increased from five to 25 soon after a Houston television station ran a report on Firestone and tire defects.

Initial complaints, as Firestone and the administration noted, indicated that nearly all the accidents — which were infrequent even in retrospect — occurred in hot-weather states like Texas and Arizona, generally during summer and usually when the tires were driven at high speeds for long periods. Firestone also said that many of the tires that separated had been damaged previously.

But the facts, which are hard to pin down, were quickly overrun by publicity. From the time the recall of the 6.5 million tires still on the road was announced Aug. 9, reports of tread separation increased and the administration, having combed through police reports, linked the tires to 62 deaths. The number quickly increased to 88, then 101. The number of dead did not increase in the interim, but more fatalities that had occurred before February were being reported and "linked to" the Firestone tires, which may or may not have caused the crashes.

Ford and Congress blamed Firestone for failing to alert the public and issue a recall sooner. This is before anyone had proven that a single accident or death was caused by a Firestone tire. While the company has admitted that a small percentage of its tires were defective, no one has been able to isolate a structural flaw.

Of course, even one death is too many. But the only sure way to prevent traffic fatalities is for Americans to stop driving. In the meantime, it has gone largely unsaid that the number of deaths caused by rollover crashes, especially in sport-utility vehicles, continue to dwarf those blamed on bad tires.

In 1999 alone, there were 10,694 rollover crash deaths, according to the administration. Almost 2,000 of the dead drove SUVs. Of Americans who died by crashing in an SUV, 63% were in rollovers. In regular cars, by contrast, 23% of fatal crashes were rollovers. A driver or passenger is much more likely to roll over and die in an SUV than in an ordinary car. (Incidentally, 76% of people who died in SUV rollovers were not wearing seat belts.)

No wonder Ford would rather focus attention on tires, a relatively small problem, than on SUV rollovers, a much deadlier one. At a recent congressional hearing, Ford executive Helen Petrauskas testified that most Firestone tire problems occurred on Ford Explorer SUVs, since "we had the misfortune of having most of the bad tires on our cars." Equally accurate, Firestone had the misfortune of having most of its tires on Explorers.

All SUVs are more likely than regular cars to roll over because they have a high center of gravity. Drivers use SUVs like station wagons, but they don't perform like wagons.

Legislators led by Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin (R-La.) heap blame on Firestone, which is owned by Bridgestone, a Japanese company, or to a lesser extent, on Ford. Congressmen, especially those from Michigan, damn the administration for failing to alert consumers earlier. The administration, after all, has no workers and no shareholders.

Thus, Congress investigates the recalls. But about rollovers, it does nothing. Or less than nothing. For years, consumer advocates have lobbied for government ratings of a car's likelihood to roll over. But legislators have blocked this reform.

American drivers, for their part, continue to buy SUVs, liking the ride, the rush of power and, ironically, the sense of safety that the high-riding cars provide. By focusing only on tire defects, this illusion lives on.

Ackman is a lawyer and a Forbes.com staff writer