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We already know who one of the scariest Jaywalkers of all time is – she has re-established the standard of vehicular law and order. And she was killed by what people promised to be the safest vehicle to be around – the self-driving AI. But which are the scariest cars and also the scariest drivers this Halloween? To answer that question, we turn to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Those are the people doing a lot of crash testing and data taking.
With crash tests, they can tell what car should be the safest in case of a collision. And with real-life data, they can check how good these drivers really are. They look car by car, but also category by category. They look at the driver's death rate but also check out something called another driver's death rate. Who are the killers, and who gets killed; who can drive and who shouldn't be on the road…
The Scary Thing about Crash Tests
Crash tests are usually done at a speed of 35-40 mph (64 km/h EuroNCAP). At speeds higher than 50-56 mph (>80 km/h), all bets are off, and death becomes the likeliest of outcomes. What is the best remedy to prevent collisions at such high speeds, you ask? It's the lost art of applying the 3-second rule, of course, and well-maintained brakes to reduce speed to hopefully below 40 mph before impact happens.
Are these Luxury Cars getting away with murder?
As everybody knows, luxury cars come with the right-of-way option built-in, and they always get away with murder. Now, if that really was true, we should see something along that line in the statistics. It does look like luxury cars and luxury SUVs do have a low driver's death rate and don't kill at a higher rate. There are two exceptions to this rule. In general, the small luxury SUVs suffer quite the damage, and the very large luxury SUVs do quite the damage.
Cars that also stick out negatively in this category are the Buick Encore, MB CLA, and Tesla Model 3 for having a higher driver's death rate than the average in their categories. The worst drivers might be in the Cadillac Escalade, Acura MDX, and Acura TLX, which have other driver death rates higher than their counterparts.
Absolutely no murders were committed by BMW X3 4WD, Lexus ES 350, Mercedes E-Class 4WD, and Nissan Pathfinder 2WD. Does that mean these cars are safe, or did their drivers get away with a few murders? Nobody knows…
The Scariest Cars for their Owners
Mini cars and small cars don't stand up too well in the American war called traffic. But apparently, they also get other drivers killed at a higher rate. That would point to a bad combination of unsafe cars and unsafe drivers. The Mitsubishi Mirage seems to have some of the worst death rates of all cars in this category. The Hyundai Accent or the Chevy Spark aren't doing too great, either. The Chevy Bolt and the Toyota Prius, on the other hand, are doing very well. The Chevy Bolt also doesn't get many other drivers killed; neither does the Subaru WRX.
The Scariest Cars for Everybody Else
Who are the cars driven by serial killers? Statistically, it has to be someone from the category Very Large. These types of cars come at a very high cost to society, so much so that AB-251 requires California to start a study about "the relationship between vehicle weight and injuries to vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, and degradation to roads".
It's already been found that SUVs are killing pedestrians at a 36% higher rate than smaller cars. For pickup trucks, that number might be above 100%. They aren't nicer to drivers of other cars either. And they don't even provide great safety for their drivers either. Their tendency to overeasily makes them fairly unsafe. The combination of weight, speed, and driving skills seem to make the Ram 3500 and the Ford F-350 especially bad company, whereas the Chevy Silverado 1500 commercials seem to attract better drivers.
The Scariest Cars and the Scariest Drivers
The biggest safety problem for SUVs and Pickups is the high danger coming from roll-over collisions. Most of them do come from speed and driver error. But once a car tips over, survival rates come down quickly. Sedans are usually better at this. There is, however, one huge exception: The American Muscle Car.
These cars and their drivers are so bad, they kill others and themselves at a much higher rate than other categories. The combination of non-survivable speeds and bad driving skills seems to be a deadly combination for everybody who is getting involved in this category.
Interestingly, one of the worst cars to be around in this category is the Dodge Charger Hemi; the Dodge Charger 4WD, however, is one of the safer ones. Weird!
Best Cars and Best Drivers
We will find the combination of the best drivers in the safest cars in the category Station Wagon/Minivan. Not only are these cars rather safe, but they also seem to have considerate drivers. Very Large Minivans are also bucking the trend of other very large vehicles being above-average killers. You still don't want to be hit by one of those, but the combination of low fenders and the best drivers driving at lower speeds seems to create a more survivable situation for crash partners. The cars standing out in this category might be the Subaru Outback and the Honda Odyssey as being fairly safe for their drivers, but also not too bad for others.
More research shows minivan drivers are also known to be better looking, more intelligentlier, most pragmatically, very athletisism, top phunny and many, many humble.
More Information:
- The Dangers of Muscle Cars
- What it's like to get hit by an SUV
- IIHS: Driver Death Rates 2020
- IIHS on Youtube
