Every year about 10,000 people are killed in vehicle rollovers in the U.S., and another 24,000 are severely injured. It’s estimated that crushed roofs likely contribute to serious or fatal injuries in more than a quarter of rollover crashes.

With sobering statistics like that it is hard to believe that the current standard for vehicle roof strength was set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration way back in 1973, when Richard Nixon was still in the White House and “The Brady Bunch” and “Mannix” were among the top-rated shows on television.

More important, the current standards were written well before millions of rollover-prone SUVs were even on American roads.

That 36-year-old standard requires vehicle roofs to be strong enough to withstand 1.5 times the vehicle’s weight. Testing is done by pressing down a metal plate on the roof over the driver’s seat.

A 2005 law ordered NHTSA to redo the roof crush standard by this past July, but the agency postponed doing that until October, then December, and eventually to April of this year. Ordinarily Consumers Union would oppose such delays, but in this case CU and other safety groups think the delay could result in stronger roof crush standards than those that have heretofore been proposed by NHTSA.

The agency’s idea as currently proposed is to increase roof testing pressure to 2.5 times the vehicle’s weight. CU’s safety team thinks that doesn’t go nearly far enough. Instead, NHTSA should increase testing pressure even more and develop a dynamic test that better reflects real-world rollovers. The test should also factor in how occupants are restrained in a rollover and include a standard to ensure that roof pillars do not reduce visibility. NHTSA has shown with frontal-crash and rollover-resistance testing that it can reduce variability to an acceptable level.

The March issue of Consumer Reports tells the story of Patrick Parker, a man who was injured in a rollover.