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Size Matters When Crash Safety Is Involved: IIHS Crash Report

14 Ford Fiesta Crash Test jpeg 2014 Ford Fiesta | IIHS image

The good news is that driving deaths went down in 2019; the bad news is that your risks of being killed in a crash go up significantly if you’re driving a small car. That’s according to the latest study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. 

Related: Another Reason 2019 Was Better: Driving Deaths Declined

The agency looked at driver death rates by vehicle body style and size, and it determined compact and subcompact cars accounted for 15 of the 20 models with the highest death rates for model-year 2017. Small cars have the highest overall death rate of any vehicle category with 82 fatalities per million registered vehicle years. 

To be included in the study,  a vehicle must have had at least 100,000 registered vehicle years of exposure from 2015-2018 or at least 20 deaths.

The Ford Fiesta subcompact, which is no longer in production, was the biggest offender with 141 fatalities per million registered vehicle years. IIHS also noted that the Fiesta earned a marginal score in its driver-side small overlap crash test. Others on the danger list include the Hyundai Accent (116), Chevrolet Sonic (98), Nissan Versa Note (96) and Fiat 500 (95) — all subcompact vehicles. 

On the flip side, large SUVs have the lowest overall death rate with 15 fatalities per million registered vehicle years. The GMC Yukon XL had zero deaths per million registered vehicle years, as did the Infiniti QX60, Land Rover Range Rover Evoque, Lexus NX 200t and Porsche Cayenne SUVs; the Mercedes-Benz C-Class compact sedan and the Volkswagen Golf compact hatchback are notable because they also had zero deaths per million registered vehicle years. 

IIHS said almost half of the 20 models with the lowest death rates were luxury SUVs, which makes sense given that luxury vehicles often come with advanced safety and driver assistance features that cheaper cars don’t have; studies show these features, like automatic emergency braking, save lives.  

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IIHS has been studying driver death rates since 1989 using information from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System. It found that the average driver death rate for all 2017 models increased to 36 deaths, compared with 30 for 2014 models. The latest findings mirror others done by IIHS that determined that smaller cars have higher fatality rates.  

“Smaller vehicles offer less protection for the driver in crashes, and their lighter mass means that they take the brunt of collisions with larger vehicles,” Joe Nolan, IIHS senior vice president of vehicle research, said in a statement. 

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Jennifer Geiger
News Editor Jennifer Geiger joined the automotive industry in 2003, much to the delight of her Corvette-obsessed dad. Jennifer is an expert reviewer, certified car-seat technician and mom of three. She wears a lot of hats — many of them while driving a minivan.
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