Your Most Likely To Die If You Crash In One Of These Vehicles...

The risk of dying in a crash in a late-model vehicle has gone up slightly, as a stronger economy has led drivers to take to the road more often and in more dangerous ways. Meanwhile, a new study predicts traffic deaths will fall only slightly over the coming years, given current expectations for the economy.

The overall rate of driver deaths for 2014 models is 30 per million registered vehicle years, up from 28 for 2011 models (see "Saving lives: Improved vehicle designs bring down death rates," Jan. 29, 2015). The death rate for individual vehicles varies widely, from 0 for 11 vehicles to 104 per million registered vehicle years for the Hyundai Accent, a minicar.

The last time IIHS calculated driver death rates, the overall rate had fallen by more than a third over three years. Researchers found that the drop was driven largely by improved vehicle designs and safety technology. Such improvements have continued, but the new results show that, by themselves, they won't be enough to eliminate traffic deaths.

"Vehicles continue to improve, performing better and better in crash tests," says David Zuby, IIHS executive vice president and chief research officer. "The latest driver death rates show there is a limit to how much these changes can accomplish without other kinds of efforts."

 

IIHS Death Rate Report
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MDarringer - 5/30/2017 5:31:50 PM

+5 Boost

You're

malba2367 - 5/30/2017 5:49:19 PM

-1 Boost

There was a very good study done by some Emergency Medicine Physicians a couple years back that basically showed that the Weight of the Vehicle and Price of the vehicle were the most significant predictors of death/serious injury in vehicle accidents. This list proves that small low cost vehicles are the worst place to be during an accident regardless of NHTSA, IIHS etc tests.

SanJoseDriver - 5/30/2017 6:26:45 PM

+1 Boost

The Challenger, Titan, and Maxima are on the list as well.

malba2367 - 5/30/2017 6:41:38 PM

-2 Boost

There may be certain vehicles that attract a customers that drive in a risky fashion, or certain vehicles that are just poorly designed in terms of crashworthiness. But the trend from that study was that drivers of larger, more expensive cars fared better in car crashes. Note that there not one luxury car on that list, and vast majority of cars are small cars and lower cost.

MorePower - 5/31/2017 6:05:35 AM

+1 Boost

The problem with this list is that it does not take in extraneous factors into account like the age of the drivers, their driving ability/maturity and how the vehicles were being used.

While cost and weight are definitely factors, one can not overlook that a lot of these cars would be driven by inexperienced and easily distracted drivers.