Vehicle Death Rates

[MarineHawk]

http://www.iihs.org/sr/pdfs/sr4204.pdf

Where are the Hummers?

Why does the Tahoe do better than the Yukon?

I noticed that there was not one single multi-vehicle death of a person in an Avalanche.

Why is the death rate for Excursion occupants so high?

[BlueHUMMERH2]

I found that study to be interesting as well. I trust their data, because IIHS data helps determine the insurance rates for most, if not all, auto insurance companies. So they wouldn't call an unsafe car "safe".

At any rate, I think the fact that the Chevy Astro van had the lowest death rate. Especially since it's crash results are atrocious. But the other vehicles in the top ten seem to make sense.

The Excursion was extremely high in death rate, and I would attribute that to it's seemingly high center of gravity (Ford trucks in general look like they sit high) and it's probably got an extremely weak roof structure combined with it's heavy weight. It had a very high rollover death rate (almost half of the deaths, according to the text), and also very high single vehicle, which is mostly a function of weight, and I suppose lackluster occupant restraints and/or inadequate body crush zones.

Perhaps there were too few accidents or deaths to make a determination for the H2. The H3 is too new... The corrected results on page 6 show that the H2 would be the 3rd SAFEST class of vehicle you could purchase/drive in MY2004. It would be impossible to draw results about the H3 because the data in this study only covers up to MY 2004. Newer models, updates, and safety advances (ESC!) will have significantly affected this data by MY 2006 or MY 2007.

It's cool to see that in the list of bests, most of the vehicles are SUV's, or weight quite a bit. The worst list consists of some of the smallest, lightest vehicles on the road, in their class, with the exception of the Blazer.

[MarineHawk]

Yeah, there are no Range Rover stats either, but the Land Rover Discovery is a deathtrap.

[Steve - SanJose]

Interesting, but somewhat predictable based on vehicle type/weight and driver demographics.

[usetosellhummer]

????????????????? hummer