

The most dangerous car in America is... - jasontraff
http://blog.leaky.com/the-most-dangerous-car-in-america-is

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ansy
Is it the car that's deadly, or does the car attract deadly drivers?

For example, are there other, stronger predictors of deadly accidents such as
age, geography, or occupation? And are those people more likely to buy certain
cars? I notice Buick has fewer deaths per million, but could that be because
Buick attracts more cautious or less frequent drivers?

I assume the IIHS has competent statisticians. But I'd still be interested to
see how strongly the differences between drivers factor into this.

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jasontraff
I wondered about this too. The other part is -- how much is a car driven. Even
if you look at behavior, is a 350z that much safer than a Porsche 911? Or is
it just that 350z are driven [X] number of times more often, in the same
manner, and thus result in a much higher death rate.

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veyron
The porsche 911 line definitely handles better than the 350Z. Even in bad
weather, which is where I would expect most of the accidents would have
occurred.

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eftpotrm
Hmm, guess what I just bought.....

By itself this data isn't much use though, I suspect. For years Concorde was
statistically incredibly safe, then one crash made it statistically incredibly
dangerous, simply because there were only 14 flying in the first place - small
datasets are rather prone to wild swings. Without knowing _at least_ incidents
per car sold, let alone incidents per passenger mile, it's not very useful.

There's then the cause of incidents. Without wishing to cast undue aspersions
on my fellow owners, I suspect it may be the sort of car more likely to be
driven in a manner likely to put it at risk of serious accidents. It is, after
all, about the fastest car for the money and almost certainly the fastest 2WD
car for the money. I hope I drive relatively sensibly in it, I certainly try
not to be an a##e just because I've got a fast car and am seriously
considering advanced driver training. Do all owners though? Probably not, and
I'm probably not being as good as I think I am either. Point is, none of that
directly implies the car itself is dangerous, merely that it tends to be
driven in a way that increases the risk of incidents. When did you last
complain about some tearaway hooligan in a Toyota Yaris or Kia Rio?

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Natsu
> By itself this data isn't much use though, I suspect. For years Concorde was
> statistically incredibly safe, then one crash made it statistically
> incredibly dangerous, simply because there were only 14 flying in the first
> place - small datasets are rather prone to wild swings.

They don't have the metrics you mentioned, but all of those cars have at least
100k registered vehicles, as is stated in the third paragraph: "The study
looked at vehicle models from 2005 to 2008 that had more than 100,000
registered vehicles and examined the driver death rate between 2006 and 2009."

~~~
eftpotrm
Hmm, yes, I'm a twit - they did specifically say this is deaths per vehicle.
Still not against per passenger mile or as deviance from the demographic norm
for the driver which would be what we'd really need to find how dangerous the
_car_ inherently was, but still, this is better than I said.

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icey
I drove a 350z for a couple of years and never felt more invisible on the road
than when I was driving it.

It was a weekly occurrence to have a big truck merge right into my lane
without seeing me, causing me to have to swerve to avoid getting creamed. I'm
not sure if it was because it was so low to the ground or what, but I always
had to pay extra attention every time I got behind the wheel.

~~~
WesleyJohnson
I've had mine for close to 3 years now and I can't recall any instance where I
felt like this. I'm curious where you live, or at least where you did most of
your driving where you felt invisible in it? I had it for the first year in a
small town in Ohio (thought it was garaged for the winter as it's impossible
to keep the tires planted in the snow) and I've been down in Florida's Space
Coast for the last 2 years with no real issues revolving around not being
seen.

~~~
icey
I'm in Phoenix, AZ. We have terrible drivers in general, and I spend a lot of
time on I-10.

The problem was usually someone with a cellphone planted on their left ear
during rush-hour, occluding the view of their rear-view mirror.

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spaghetti
I think the data is misleading. It implies there's something safer about the
physical car, its structure etc while the trends may be due to the age ranges,
emotional maturity, sense of responsibility etc of the average driver for the
particular model. Just look at the "safest" car (Chrysler Sebring). IMO that's
a car for relatively conservative drivers. While the most dangerous car
(Nissan 350z) is IMO driven more often by younger, less responsible people.

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larrik
These are some surprising results.

1) A lot of Nissans. A real lot.

2) A lot of trucks.

3) A lot of the same makes (Nissan, Chevy), while some notable absences (only
one Toyota, no Hondas)

4) Kia Spectra is listed twice, with no differentiation. Looks like a mistake,
as it is the only one like that. (I'm assuming different years) Edit: It's
actually station wagon vs. sedan, with the wagon higher.

~~~
jasontraff
The key difference between the 'safe' vs 'unsafe' cars was electronic
stability control. We talk a little about it in another post. The other
difference was size (namely weight and height of a car). Those were the key
themes that emerged.

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ovi256
It would have been nice to see a plot of all data, not just the selected
region of the 26 most dangerous.

~~~
jasontraff
That's a great idea, and I'm curious as well. I may have to get back to you on
that. You can find the report at:
<http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4605.pdf>

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themal
It would be interesting to see what were the most common vehicles to be
involved in crashes with these 'dangerous' cars.

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r00fus
Scanning the raw data, I see the Toyota Sienna has zero reported deaths in any
category (Minivans seem to do well in all categories).

Like others mention, this likely has to do with some degree of selection bias
(i.e., Drivers who are safer choose certain vehicle types like minivans) as
well as (in the case of the Sienna) a very small sample size, likely due to
the model redesign that fell within the period, limiting the data - survey
only chose most recent model data during the period).

What's also frustrating is they don't mention all deaths/injuries. For some
insight into that, it's probably best to look at the IIHS other reports on
insurance losses per model:
<http://www.iihs.org/research/hldi/composite_intro.html>

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cullenking
The 350z is bought by the racer types. Another thing you'll notice is the
really high occurance of salvage title sports cars on craigslist. I want a WRX
wagon for my next car, and a solid 50% of the used WRX sedans I see on
craigslist are salvage titled. I bet the numbers are the same or higher for
the 350z!

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mehmeta
I'd be curious to see whether it takes crash speeds into account. Isn't it
wrong to name a car dangerous purely based on the number of people died in it?
I'd argue the driving habits of the particular demographic that drives a
particular car should be a huge factor.

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sorbus
Perhaps like looking at the number of driver deaths per million registered
vehicles? ... oh. Wait. That's on the graph. And is the axis on which the
"most dangerous car" is furthest out on.

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hyperbovine
You're letting your smartassitude get in the way of things. By demographics,
gp is talking about things like age, gender, region, etc. If Nissan 350Z
owners skew heavily towards irresponsible, twentysomething males pulling 140
on the nearest freeway, then it's not really fair to equate crash statistics
(even if normalized) with a characteristic inherent to the vehicle itself. I
could build a car of of paper mache and duct tape, but if I only sell it to
grandmothers who drive to the store once a month it would barely even show up
on this graph. All of which is to stay: the sole purpose of an infographic is
to mask nuances in complex data. Draw conclusions from them at your own peril.

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sp332
Remember, these are only the most dangerous cars that passed all the DOT
safety requirements and (presumably) were maintained and passed inspection.
It's easy enough to make a more dangerous car, but it's hard to be legal about
it.

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lylejohnson
I am so glad I can't afford an expensive sportscar.

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redrobot5050
Get a Honda Accord V6. Basically the same weight. About 1 second slower in its
0-60 acceleration. Cheaper, better mileage and safer.

~~~
jasontraff
Just to add, the Honda Accord scored really well in the test with 19 driver
deaths, which is considerably lower than the average of 48 and the 350z high
of 143.

