On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 04:28:04 GMT, "GO Mavs" > wrote:
>"In the latest crash figures available from 2003, provided by the Insurance
>Institute for Highway Safety, there were 142 fatalities per million
>registered vehicles for the smallest cars. That figure drops to 108
>fatalities for the next larger class of cars. For large sedans, that number
>drops to 61 per million. For small SUVs, the figure was 75 deaths per
>million as compared with 62 for large SUVs. For pickups, totals increased to
>124 per million for small trucks and 102 per million for large."
IIHS really tries to bury the details of Driver Fatalities Statistics.
If you don't believe me, go to:
http://www.iihs.org/
and try to find them. This is as close as I could get:
http://www.iihs.org/research/fatalit...ants.html#sec3
It is a an aggregate list by vehicle type rather than individual makes
and models. I have seen these results in the past and the interesting
thing is how much variability there is. Some small cars have lower
driver fatality rates than some very large SUVs.
Go here to see lists of vehicles with the highest and lowest driver
fatality rates:
http://tinyurl.com/2od58m
There are surprises, some of which demonstrate the weakness of real
world surveys. Are Chevy Astros really that safe, or is flower
delivery just an inherently low risk occupation? Harder to explain
away is why the Chevy Blazer death rate is 21 times higher than an
Infiniti G35.
>Technically Mike is right, but the numbers are still so low that even a half
>a percent change is not very much.
>
>Secondly, there are more small cars on the road than larger cars.
As others have pointed out, this is not really a factor, at least not
in the manner you imply. But read on.
>Furthermore, how many of those accidents are more deadly because a gas
>hogging driver, in a large SUV, hits a small car?
Very true, and you also have to consider the opposite. Is the monster
SUV's fatality rate low because it most often collides with something
smaller? What if everyone were driving monster SUVs?
The way the data is presented is a distorted view of public safety. It
looks at the vehicle in the vacuum of "does it protect the occupants"
rather than "does it pose unnecessary risk to everyone else." Why are
there no statistics on the likelihood of Model X causing the driver of
the other vehicle to die? And how about pedestrians? Why do we have
a side-impact test which determines the ability of a car to resist a
tall SUV bumper instead of a law requiring all passenger vehicles
(i.e. SUVs) to have a uniform bumper height? According to the IIHS
reasoning, a vehicle that killed someone else every time you drive it
but only killed the driver six times in every million vehicle years
would be the safest vehicle on the road.
This attitude reflects a popular political/economic argument which
conveniently justifies greedy, self-centered lifestyles. Some call
this "the law of the jungle," but the truth is that behavior like this
will get you kicked out of the ape tribe PDQ.
>So basically what Mike is asking small car owners to do is to accomidate him
>because he is a pussy. So instead of buiying a 15 thousand dollar gas saver,
>you should buy a 30 thousand dollar SUV (this difference is what Mike calls
>"Saving a few bucks vs safety")
>
>This way, Mike does not feel so guilty when he crushes a smaller car with
>his Mormon sized family in his Chevy Tahoe!
If Mike was really concerned with safety, he would be better off with
a Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna which have lower driver fatality
rates than any "full size" SUV