Cheap Car Insurance | Are Light Small Cars Safe?

A study¹ done some years ago exposed the fallacy of choosing vehicle safety based only on size or weight.

Crash testing and real world collisions have documented the effects of seat belts and passive restraints such as air bags and proved the benefits of protecting drivers and passengers in the event of a collision with another vehicle or another object.

Better structural engineering and technology have certainly made major improvements in the ability of vehicles to protect occupants from more serious injuries and fatalities.

But what about the ability of a driver to avoid a collision in the first place? Being able to control and maneuver a vehicle well can have a big effect on collision avoidance. Recent advances in using anti-lock brake systems also enable control of a vehicle’s steering to create electronic stability control systems that intervene with the way the driver uses the brakes and power.

By using computer control of braking and throttle a vehicle can be stabilized to avoid skidding, spin-out, and even possible rollover in spite of what the driver is doing.

This first table lists the fatalities per million vehicle model of the drivers.

Make/Model Best 6	Driver Deaths per million vehicles	Make/Model Worst 6	Driver Deaths per million vehicles
Chrysler T & C minivan	31	Dodge Neon subcompact	161
Ford Windstar minivan	37	Pontiac Sunfire subcompact	158
Toyota Avalon large sedan	40	Chevrolet Cavalier subcompact	146
Toyota Camry mid sedan	41	Pontiac Grand Am compact	118
Chevrolet Suburban large SUV	46	Toyota Tacoma pickup	111
Volkswagen Jetta subcompact	47	Ford F-Series pickup	110

The following table lists fatalities per million vehicle model of others involved.

Make/Model Best 6	Other Deaths per million vehicles	Make/Model Worst 6	Other Deaths per million vehicles
Toyota Avalon	20	Ford F-Series	128
Volkswagen Jetta	23	Chevrolet Tahoe	74
Buick Century	23	Ford Explorer	60
Subaru Legacy/Outback	24	Toyota Tacoma	59
Honda Civic	25	Chevrolet Suburban	59
Nissan Maxima	26	Ford Expedition	57

These figures reveal how size and weight of a vehicle has less to do with safety than commonly believed.

Although occupants of a large and possibly heavy vehicle may come off better in a collision, drivers of better handling vehicles might avoid being in collisions in the first place.

Ross and Wenzel found that SUVs are no safer for their drivers than cars. Popular midsize cars, minivans and import luxury cars have the safest records, while SUVs are about as risky as the average midsize or large car, and are no safer than many compact and subcompact models.

Other factors are obviously involved, such as driver behavior but the data shows up some interesting results for different-sized and different quality vehicles such as the Volkswagon Jetta, Toyota Avalon, Ford F-Series and Toyota Tacoma.

Measuring the combined risk, most cars are safer than SUVs, while pickup trucks are less safe than all other types of vehicle.

“It turns out that relatively inexpensive light cars do tend to be unsafe, but more expensive light cars are much safer, and are as safe as heavier cars and SUV models. In any event, the argument that lowering the weight of cars to achieve high fuel economy has resulted in excess deaths is unfounded. If designers pay careful attention to safety in vehicle design, smaller cars can be, and indeed have been, made as safe as larger ones,” said the researcher Marc Ross.

¹ – Tom Wenzel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,  and Marc Ross, University of Michigan, 2002.

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