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| Last updated on: 7th of September 2010 at 10:22 am (EST) | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Driving Is Dangerous! .
. In 2006 there were 5,973,000[1] police-reported motor vehicle traffic accidents at a time when there were 238 million licensed drivers in this country. This means one out of every thirty-eight licensed drivers was involved in a motor vehicle accident during that year. Yet, 2006 was not an unusual year for traffic accidents, rather quite typical, including the 42,642 deaths and over 2 million injuries that year. Of course, even very careful drivers are involved in accidents since half the time it is the other driver’s fault. . . Based on the very large numbers of traffic accidents, we need to consider them as so commonplace that we will likely experience this ourselves. If all vehicles were essentially equivalent in protecting its occupants during the crash then we may need to be resigned to accept the exposure to injury and death the automobile brings with it. However, this is not the case! Upon reviewing many millions of accidents that have already occurred, certain data patterns can be observed. The difference in fatality rates among vehicles is more than 20:1 and the differentiating characteristics are well understood.
. The graph below ranks driver fatality rates for 156 of the most popular vehicles, model years 1994 - 1997. The fatality data used to create the rankings were accumulated over a 4-year period, 1995 - 1998, during which there were 26,428,000 traffic accidents of which 8,633,000 resulted in injuries to one or more persons and 149,166 resulted in one or more deaths[2]. The 1994-1997 model-year period was used for this graph however its characteristics are similar for any other 4-year period which could have been shown.. .. The vertical height of each line on the chart represents one of 156 specific vehicle models, and on average each line represents 55,339 injuries and 956 fatalities. The height of each line represents the actual number of driver fatalities per million vehicles that occurred during the 4-year period, 1995 - 1998. The Vehicle with the lowest fatality rate (Nissan Quest Van) had 18 deaths per million vs. the vehicle with the highest (Chevrolet Camero) at 308 deaths per million, with an average fatality rate across all vehicles of 93 per million. This means that Camero drivers died at a rate 17 times greater than those driving Quests. . Driver Death Rates for 156 Popular Vehicles  Click here to see the data table used to create this chart. Words of caution: If you use fatality rates to select a vehicle, only do so for the same model and year, as listed. Fatality statistics and crash test results obtained for specific model years generally do not apply to other model years (even for the same model name). Arguably, some of the variations observed in this chart may be due to human factors, such as driver behavior (e.g., Camero drivers may be more aggressive than Nissan Quest drivers) but as you will see on the Elements of Risk page, laboratory controlled crash tests also demonstrate large variations in outcome among different vehicles. So, with the benefit of hindsight, you can look back at the 167,000 deaths which occurred in the 1995 – 1998 period, and ask: “What if everyone had only been driving vehicles with low fatality rates? How many lives would have been saved?” As you can see by observing the large variations in SCORE for vehicles, it would be reasonable to estimate that many, or even the majority, of the deaths which occurred may have been preventable, had the drivers known how to select a safer vehicle. The objective of this website is to provide you with the means to select a safer vehicle, thereby reducing your risk of becoming a future fatality statistic. .
Automobile Accidents are #1 Cause of Death for ages 3 - 34 Along with cigarette-smoking-induced lung cancer, traffic fatalities are one of the leading causes of preventable death in the United States. For those between ages 3 through 34, traffic accidents are the #1 cause of death (for all causes, including natural deaths), and for the general population it ranks on par with breast cancer, at approximately 42,000 deaths per year. Unlike breast cancer however, you have substantial control over your risk of becoming a traffic fatality by utilizing appropriate safety criteria for selecting the vehicle you drive. Laboratory crash testing proves that under identical crash conditions some vehicles can kill you while others allow you to walk away, consistent with the large variation in traffic fatality rates between vehicles (comparing the vehicles with the lowest vs. the highest deaths per million vehicles). It is essential that you, the consumer, by-pass the hype about safety and be able to compare the relative safety of vehicles in a consistent, objective manner. Six million traffic accidents occur annually in the U.S., so despite being a careful driver yourself you can easily become a victim. The automobile is at the epicenter of our culture. However, you don't need to accept the high risk of being a traffic casualty as the unavoidable price of modern living. Once you recognize that driving is really a dangerous activity and that the vehicle, itself, plays a major role in your survivability, you then realize that identifying which vehicles are safest, is very difficult to determine. The SCORE was created to simplify your search for the safest vehicles.
[1] NHTSA’s Traffic Safety Facts 2006, Fatality Analysis and Reporting System [2] IIHS - Highway Loss Data Institute, Status Report, Vol 35, No 7 WWW.compushade.com [3] IIHS Status Report, Vol 40, No 3, 3/05. {Go to http://www.iihs.org/srpdfs/sr4003.pdf}
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