The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) has been busy again, this time with ranking driver death rates by make and model for the 2023 model year. It’s a dark subject, but there are actionable results from the IIHS’s study, and awareness is key when it comes to safety. The broad conclusion isn’t a surprise in that more than half of the 2023 model year vehicles with the highest driver death rates are small cars, sports cars, and muscle cars. Dig deeper, though, and we find America has a real problem.
Per IIHS: The rates include only driver deaths because all vehicles on the road have drivers, but not all of them have passengers or the same number of passengers. The number of deaths is derived from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Registration data come from Mobility Global.
Small Cars Have The Highest Rates, But It’s Not Strictly A Size Issue
2023 Kia RioKia
The model with the highest death rate from 2023 is the Kia Rio, with 170 deaths per million registration years. The Kia Rio is a small car with a decent set of safety ratings from the IIHS, but here’s where things get interesting. The Nissan Versa, also a small car, is second. But the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Challenger are not small, and they occupy the next three spots. The Chrysler’s death rate is 132, while the Challenger – divided up by Hemi and non-Hemi trims, had death rates of 127 and 125.
Nissan had three vehicles in the top 10, including Altima and Maxima along with the Versa. If you lump Kia and Hyundai together as Hyundai Group, they also had three on the list. Similarly, with Chrysler and Dodge together under the Stellantis umbrella, that’s another three in the top 10. That leaves the Chevrolet Malibu, a midsize car, rounding out the worst of the study with a death rate of 116, enough for the seventh spot. Curiously, half the vehicles in the top 10 have since been canceled.
2019 Chevrolet Malibu front 3/4 angle in redChevrolet
Conversely, eighteen of the twenty models with the lowest death rate in a crash are SUVs: four are small, nine are midsize, four are large, and one is a “very large model.” And the lowest of the low are really low: the Audi Q7, BMW X7, Chevrolet Tahoe 4WD, Mercedes-Benz GLB-Class, Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class, and Toyota Tundra CrewMax 4WD all have a death rate of zero for 2023. Note that the majority of these are luxury vehicles.
The Most Dangerous Vehicles To Others
2019 – 2026 Ram 3500 front 3/4 angle while drivingRam
The IIHS also makes a note of the other car in a car crash, and ranks those with a death rate for other drivers – known as “other-driver” deaths. This is where we find size does matter. On this list, everything in the top 10 is either a larger car or large pickup truck, save for the Cadillac XT5 which is a midsize SUV just making the top 10 with an other-driver death rate of 100.
At the very top is one of the largest vehicles you don’t need a commercial license to drive: the Ram 3500 pickup. Specifically, the list names the 3500 Crew Cab Long Bed truck with 4WD, a big vehicle indeed. Its other-driver death rate lands at a sky-high 204, way ahead of the second place Dodge Charger Hemi at 161. As with the previous list, IIHS separates Charger by Hemi and non-Hemi models, and the non-Hemi is third at 136.
The Chevrolet Silverado 3500 Crew Cab short bed is number four at 126, and another Ram, this time the 1500 Classic Crew Cab short bed 4WD, is in fifth at 124. In fact, this study really doesn’t look good for Ram or Stellantis North America. Between all the Ram and Dodge entries, Stellantis brands hold no less than seven of the top 10 spots for other-driver death rates.
And IIHS President David Harkey has some strong words as to why those vehicles are at the top of the list.
“Even the safest small cars don’t fare well in crashes with large pickups and heavy SUVs. Powerful engines and marketing that attracts aggressive drivers is the issue for sports cars and muscle cars. They’re dangerous mainly because of how they’re driven.”
– IIHS President David Harkey.
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
2027 Audi Q7 dynamic driving imagery.Audi
There are some overreaching points worth contemplating from the data. The lower death rate for luxury vehicles is likely because they can, and often do, come with more safety equipment than affordable segment cars, and their safety equipment is often on the cutting edge. There are affordable cars with high safety ratings, but your choice is limited compared with going upmarket.
People who buy sports cars and muscle cars are much more likely to drive recklessly or beyond their skill level than drivers of other vehicles. On top of that, if a vehicle is hit by a large truck or SUV, it has a higher probability of occupants being killed. Meanwhile, trucks and SUVs are getting bigger, heavier, and faster (particularly all-electric models), while muscle and sports cars are getting faster.
While a high crash safety rating is important for a vehicle, and road vehicles have never been safer in that respect, there are many other areas that still need to be addressed – including the fact that the requirements to qualify for a driver’s license in the US are, to put it mildly, rather pathetic.
Source: IIHS
