Death Rates by Vehicle Model

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/latest-driver-death-rates-highlight-dangers-of-muscle-cars

by myroon5 • 2 years ago

29 39 2 years ago

throwup2382• 2 years ago

What is going on with the Kias in the "Highest rates of other-driver deaths" list? Most of the rest of the cars on that list make sense like the huge pickups but the Kia Optima, Rio, and Forte are all on the list. Are they popular ricers for street racing or something?

Glad to see no Toyotas on the "Highest rates of driver deaths" list and the Corolla didn't place on any of the lists.

pacaro• 2 years ago

They are popular cars to steal because they are easy to steal. Stolen cars are used "differently" than other cars

wilsonnb3• 2 years ago

Probably because of the viral trend of stealing them

https://www.theverge.com/23742425/kia-boys-car-theft-steal-t...

throwup2382• 2 years ago

Of course! I forgot about the Kia boys

There's also the whole Kia challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Challenge

twojacobtwo• 2 years ago

I was just about to ask the same question. My initial thought was that perhaps they all have small crumple zones, which would increase the overall force applied to everyone involved.

I looked up images of the vehicles you mentioned and they all seem to have a relatively aggressive slope on their front ends, which got me thinking that they may end up acting like a sort of ramp in a collision and cause the other vehicle to become airborne or roll over.

Two4• 2 years ago

That's not really what happens with sloped front ends, which are a safety measure for pedestrians. Unlike when a Ferd F15000 hits you and the flat front grill knocks you flush at head height, sloped front ends tend to hit you in the legs and allow your torso to roll down on to the hood. In a head-to-head collision with another vehicle, the sloped front end is part of the crumple zone engineering, redirecting the forces upwards through a panel concertina and downwards through the engine block, which ideally should pop out and down towards the road.

dbreunig• 2 years ago

It's crazy that the "minicar" Kia Rio ranks in the top 10 among other-driver deaths. The Kia effect is real.

jonathan_landy• 2 years ago

Neat, I wasn’t aware of available data like this. I recently bought a used smart car — lots of fun, but I admit I worried it was a death trap. It’s not in this list but a google showed they are actually not much worse than average.

https://www.smartcarofamerica.com/threads/updated-smart-acci...

cr125rider• 2 years ago

I’ve seen only one of those little guys on a freeway before. I suspect many, many more miles inner city where lower speeds and larger impacts are less common.

They do sound fun to rip around in. You used to be able to rent them with an app around my city. I think it was helpful for a lot of people

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

The headline calls out muscle cars but 5 of the top 6 cars are mini cars.

Edit: that's for driver deaths. Scroll farther down and it's the opposite for "other driver" deaths, which is not too surprising I guess.

cge• 2 years ago

The point being made by the headline seems to be that muscle cars in the highest driver death rates charts are prominent by comparison to previous years (they link to 2017 [1], where only the Mustang was present), while mini cars have been consistently prominent.

[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/driver-death-rates-remain-h...

makk• 2 years ago

It’s all in the names. Highest rates of other-driver deaths are caused by vehicles named “Ram” and “Gladiator”.

AyyEye• 2 years ago

Names that rank higher than "gladiator": Optima Rio Cherokee Forte Altima

doe_eyes• 2 years ago

The highest-ranking car is Ram 3500 crew cab long bed. It's over 14 foot long and weighs around 8,000 lbs. It's closer to colliding with a bus than with a sedan.

But it's also not a truck people buy as a suburban fashion statement. They usually go for smaller pickups, like F-150 with a short bed.

nunez2• 2 years ago

plenty of diesel 3500s in Texas, unfortunately; mostly in the exurbs and rural areas, though.

maxerickson• 2 years ago

Be interesting to see the death rates for people not in a vehicle.

hamster77• 2 years ago

E-Class surprisingly safe

FriedPickles• 2 years ago

Surprised to see electric cars on the list of lowest other driver deaths. I always thought their additional weight made them more dangerous to other drivers.

bryanlarsen3• 2 years ago

The popular electric cars aren't significantly heavier than other cars in their class. For instance, a Tesla Model 3 and a BMW 3 series have very comparable weights. An F-150 Lightning Lariat is less than 10% heavier than a F-150 Hybrid Lariat.

Yes, the electric HUMMER is crazy heavy. But electric cars are sold by range, and weight kills range, so the EVs that sell well are the lighter models.

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

More battery gives you more range and therefore more weight, which then takes away range. But the extra weight of an EV is a heavier battery than an engine/fuel tank. A BMW i4 is 4,600 pounds, vs an ice 4 series 3500 to 4000 pounds.

trhway• 2 years ago

I'd think that the "skateboard" architecture with even typical crumple zoning would make them more safe for the both - the driver and the other driver - than the typical front-engine layout of an ICE car which is really like a ram (until special measures are taken to drop the engine down or something similar during the impact).

Plus the EVs drive better - better acceleration plus regenerative braking (so you can always slow down without wasting the energy/fuel thus driving more defensively more naturally), so you're much more in control of the situation. For example EVs are much better at doing the STOP correctly - as the low speed torgue is high, so you're really comfortable doing the real legal STOP.

daghamm• 2 years ago

I recall EV drivers end up in more accidents. This may in fact be due to the higher acceleration.

There is a reason EV insurance is that much more expensive than ICE.

porphyra• 2 years ago

Generally, affluent people care more about not dying and therefore drive safer.

Anecdotally, a lot of the worst drivers in the bay area are driving beaten-up Nissan Altimas, and indeed the data shows that Altimas are high up on the most deadly list.

0xdde• 2 years ago

That's a preposterous claim. I suggest looking at the large number of far more expensive vehicles that rank above the Altima in the "Highest rates of other-driver deaths" table.

acdha2• 2 years ago

I suspect that what you’re seeing is more of an age effect: young men tend to be aggressive drivers, including the rich ones, and by the time they’ve matured into better drivers they are also likely to be better off.

One other confound to consider is safety features: more expensive vehicles tend to have features which can prevent or reduce fatalities no matter who is driving.

foobarchu• 2 years ago

They didn't say these vehicles get in fewer crashes, just that the occupants tend to die more.

To me, thats pretty obviously because big cars come out on top when colliding with smaller or equally sized cars than smaller cars on the same playing field. And that isn't to say bigger cars are a good thing, it's simply a consequence of the automotove industry arms race for larger, wider vehicles. One that is very difficult to walk back on now that those large vehicles are so prevalent. There are stats in there about luxury vehicles, but note that the ones appearing on the lowest list are all midsize or larger (anecdotally, midsize luxury cars seem huge to me vs equivalent vehicles from 30 years ago, but I don't have evidence to support that)

In other words, all that blood is on the auto industry, not poor people.

paulgb• 2 years ago

The top vehicle by other-driver deaths has a five star safety rating from the NHTSA[1]. Pretty palpable example of a complaint I often hear that US safety standards don’t consider anyone outside the vehicle.

[1] https://sethwadleydodge.com/blog/2024-ram-3500-4x4-crash-tes...

xnx2• 2 years ago

No small irony that the front of those vehicles says "RAM" at face-level to pedestrians.

rawgabbit• 2 years ago

From the site, the least safe cars in terms of fatalities are Minicars.

The least safe cars in terms of fatalities caused to others (you may be safe but your vehicle killed someone else) are very large pickups.

The Dodge Charger HEMI 2WD and Dodge Challenger 2WD were on both lists. High fatalities to its driver and high fatalities to the other-driver/other-car.

The various Jeep models also featured prominently on the other-driver fatalities list. They are built solidly and do more damage to others?

acdha2• 2 years ago

The various Jeep models also featured prominently on the other-driver fatalities list. They are built solidly and do more damage to others?

Anything built like a wall is going to increase the number of pedestrians going under the vehicle, and the off-road aesthetic tends to involve things like bull bars which significantly increase the risk to pedestrians. It probably doesn’t help that Jeep has a solid appeal to young men, who statistically tend to be aggressive drivers.

motohagiography• 2 years ago

no surprises there, I live near a suburb with a lot of cash business and the only asset it seems to go into is aftermarket car parts for these brands.

the aesthetics attract young men who don't have a clear path to hegemon social status, where those brands were associated with immigrants in the 80s and 90s, and they have been picked up by the current wave. fuzzy dice and plastic covered seats have been replaced with Khalistan and AK-47 decals, but the behavior on the roads is mostly the same, maybe with a few cultural variations. the cars are products designed to exploit young men's poor impulse control.

I don't really worry about the power of cars at all, teslas are farcially fast, and I'm a motorcyclist, but if there were something to be regulated, banned, or punitively taxed on environmental grounds, I would say it's subwoofers and aftermarket exhausts as they exist only to disrupt the way of life of others. they export poverty from one place to another and degrade every place they go. a lot of racism would disappear overnight if we stopped equipping young men with ever cheaper and more technically powerful ways of harassing people. of the opportunities our societies could provide, the opportunity to not turn your host societies against you seems like the most cost effective.

the car models exploit an underlying issue that is much older, and there are reaonsable policies that could mitigate most of the current issues with them. bass frequencies of subwoofers and exhausts have specific properties that could be solved without a lot of pain or effort imo. it would encourage people to drive like they've been in a car before.

wpollock• 2 years ago

I worry that the raw numbers here are misleading. I would have preferred to see driver deaths per model, only for those vehicles involved in a front end collision.

xnx2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure this data is of any use to help select when buying a car. It probably says more about they types of drivers who drive these cars. Any car (even small ones) can be high in other-driver deaths if it's popular with the type of driver that would hit the driver's side of another car.

nunez2• 2 years ago

This will continue happening as long as acquiring and maintaining drivers licenses and enforcing driving rules and etiquette remains a complete joke.

People were dying en masse within ten years of the auto reaching critical mass. It baffles me how the US was just totally fine with both allowing citizens to get licenses after a simple (and moderately easy to cheat) written exam and a practical that takes less than an hour to complete, and not requiring any re-examinations afterwards!

The older I get, the more I hate driving as a concept.

It also baffles me that we have speed limits but also allow car manufacturers to market cars based on speed and raw thrills.

johnea• 2 years ago

Interesting data, but not the most interesting.

I'd much more like to see total deaths by car model.

In many (but far from all) driver death crashes, the driver was at fault. But pedstrians, occupants of other cars, and occupants of crashed cars are much more innocent victims.

Death Rates by Vehicle Model

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