Mr. Recht said 85 percent of rollover deaths - of which there are about 9,000 a year - involved people not wearing seat belts.

Minivans sometimes have a center of gravity even higher than sport utilities, but they had only 40 rollover deaths per million vehicles.

The auto industry has opposed such ideas, arguing that rollover deaths are largely a matter of driver behavior, not vehicle design.

Studies have since found more than 1,200 rollover deaths in Explorers in a decade.

Yet, faulty tires still accounted for only a tenth of the rollover deaths in Explorers in the 1990's.

G.M. argued that a majority of rollover deaths occured because people were not wearing seat belts.

Federal crash records show that tire problems were a factor in only a tenth of all rollover deaths in Explorers in the 1990's.

The Times's analysis found that a vehicle rollover was the first thing that went wrong in 4,125 of the 10,657 rollover deaths last year.

The rest of the rollover deaths occurred in vehicles that flipped over only after a crash had begun with some other event, such as striking another vehicle.

Tires were a factor in a tenth of all rollover deaths in all Explorers in the 1990's.