Which Cars Have Highest and Lowest Risk of Driver Deaths?
By CINDY SCHWALB
Compare side-by-side rates.
It's not the safety of your car that is called into question. Every vehicle on the road must receive or earn the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's (NHTSA)
safety compliance certification. Beyond these standard government requirements, automobile manufacturers continue to install innovative safety measures such as driver-side airbags and anti-lock brakes.
But how safe is your car -- if you crash? Safety measures work to prevent accidents and cannot determine the outcome after one occurs.
In a
recent study, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) investigated driver fatalities among more than 125,000 automobile-related deaths from 2002 through 2005 for car models between the years of 2001 to 2004.
It discovered that some vehicles pose a greater risk of driver deaths in a car accident, while others decrease this risk.
Which Cars Have Highest and Lowest Driver Death Fatalities?
Chevrolet takes a major win -- and loss -- in both categories. The automaker's Chevrolet Astro minivan is rated to have the lowest risk of driver fatalities at seven driver deaths per million registered vehicle years (see ratings explanation below). While the automaker's two-door Chevy Blazer receives the highest driver fatality risk rating with a 232 driver death rate for the same period and year models.
Yet, both vehicles scored identical safety-crash test ratings as performed by the NHTSA.
What's It All Mean?
According to the IIHS report, the cars with the least and highest rates of driver deaths (see slideshow above) reveal key factors for consumers to consider when purchasing a new or used vehicle:
The bigger the car, the lower the risk of a driver fatality. (Except for large station wagons)
Smaller cars, in a classification, inherit a higher risk of a driver fatality. "None of the 15 vehicles with the lowest driver death rates is a small model. In contrast, 11 of the 16 vehicles with the highest death rates are mini or small models ... ", the IIHS report states.
Weight being equal, cars have lower fatality rates than pickups or SUVs.
Though safety-crash test ratings performed by the NHTSA are not relevant in determining driver fatalities when a crash does occur, a growing optional safety standard called ESC (electronic stability control) does impact driver fatalities. "All but 3 of the 15 vehicles with the lowest overall death rates have this feature," reports the IIHS, but "ESC isn't standard on any of the vehicles with the highest death rates. "
It still remains that the highest risk of driver death is beholden to the drivers themselves and their own standards of safe driving.
IIHS Driver Fatalities Rate Computations (From the IIHS Status Report):
Each models rate represents the reported number of driver deaths divided by the models number of registered years. Data are from the federal governments Fatality Analysis Reporting System and registration counts from The Polk Company.
Exposure varies considerably among the vehicles. For example, the number of registered years
for midsize four-door cars exceeds 11 million. This compares with about 550,000 for very large four-door cars. Because of this variability, researchers computed 95 percent confidence intervals with upper and lower bounds indicating the precision of the computed rates.
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