Driving Danger: The Nation's Most Deadly Cars
A look at the most dangerous cars on the road.
August 03, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com — -- Hoping to stay safe on the road? You might want to avoid certain cars.
For example, the Nissan 350Z has a death rate that's about double that of the average sports car.
But it's not for the reasons you might think. In this case, says Russ Rader, communications director for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), an organization that represents the interests of the insurance industry, the 350Z is part of a group of vehicles that tends to be driven by younger, less experienced or riskier drivers, and stands out for having high death rates, through no particular fault of the car.
"When they are in crashes," he adds, "they're particularly serious ones."
This illustrates a key point: Simply looking at the historical death rates for one particular model might not give much insight into the relative danger, or safety, of driving that vehicle. Furthermore, the most recent available federal data, interpreted by make and model by the IIHS, covers 2001 to 2004 model years in calendar years 2002 to 2005. Many models have had significant changes in safety equipment or complete redesigns since then.
The consensus among several safety experts we asked is that the best way to predict how dangerous or safe a new vehicle will be comes from looking at the way it's configured, particularly with respect to several important factors--side-impact protection, stability control and rollover risk--that together span a wide range in real-world safety.
That's what we did. Topping the list of the least safe: the Buick Rendezvous, the Ford Ranger/Mazda B-Series, the Nissan Frontier, the Ford Escape/Mercury Mariner and the Toyota Yaris.
Among the various crash tests the IIHS performs on new vehicles, according to Rader, they see the widest range of results in those with side-impact and rear whiplash protection.
"What makes a vehicle unsafe today is a lack of side-impact protection," he says. "Whiplash is not a life-threatening injury but head injuries [from a side impact] are commonly life-threatening."
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