Driver death rates remain high for small cars, models with powerful engines

More than half of the model 2023 vehicles with the highest driver death rates are small cars, sports cars or muscle cars, a new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.

“Even the safest small cars don’t fare well in crashes with large pickups and heavy SUVs,” IIHS President David Harkey said.

“Powerful engines and marketing that attracts aggressive drivers is the issue for sports cars and muscle cars. They're dangerous mainly because of how they’re driven.”

IIHS has been calculating driver death rates approximately every three years since 1989. This year marks the second time IIHS also calculated the "other-driver death rate" — the number of drivers in other vehicles killed in crashes with each model.

Size and power define the worst models on that list too, but it’s the biggest vehicles that are most dangerous to others. Ten of the top 20 are large or very large pickups, including several heavy-duty variants with more powerful engines.

Across all makes and models, the average driver death rate was 37 drivers per million registration years. The average other-driver death rate was 53. The other-driver death rate was most likely higher than the driver death rate because many of the crash partner vehicles were of older vintage and offered occupants less protection.

The best and worst performers

The model with the highest driver death rate was the Kia Rio, with 170 deaths per million registration years. The Ram 3500 crew cab long bed four-wheel-drive had the highest other-driver death rate, at 204 deaths per million registration years.

Eighteen out of the 20 models with the lowest driver death rates are SUVs, including four small, nine midsize, four large and one very large model. Six models had death rates of 0.

The Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Malibu and the two-wheel-drive versions of the Dodge Charger and Dodge Charger HEMI feature among both the models with the highest driver death rates and those with the highest other-driver death rates.

All but one of the six models that feature among the vehicles with both the lowest driver and other-driver death rates are luxury SUVs.

The models on both these lists are the BMW X5 four-wheel-drive, BMW X7 four-wheel-drive, Porsche Cayenne four-wheel-drive, Volkswagen Atlas four-wheel-drive, Volvo XC60 four-wheel-drive and Volvo XC90 four-wheel-drive.

The rates include only driver deaths because all vehicles on the road have drivers, but not all of them have passengers or the same number of passengers. The number of deaths is derived from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Registration data come from Mobility Global.

The latest rates are based on fatalities that occurred from 2021 to 2024 for vehicles from the 2023 model year as well as earlier models with the same designs and features. The numbers represent the estimated risks for 2023 models, but the data include models from as far back as 2020 if the vehicles were not substantially redesigned over the intervening period. Including these older, equivalent vehicles makes the sample size larger and therefore increases the reliability of the results.

To be included, a vehicle must have had at least 100,000 registered vehicle years of exposure from 2021 to 2024 or at least 20 deaths — which means certain models with the same characteristics of those with the highest driver or other-driver death rates were not evaluated. The death rates for all models that meet the criteria for inclusion are available on the IIHS website.

Models with too little exposure for individual estimates are included in the overall rates for vehicle size and class, such as small cars or large SUVs. Because those rates are based on much larger samples, they are more reliable safety indicators than the estimates for individual models.

Death rates vs. safety ratings

Driver death rates are a useful companion to the Institute’s safety ratings, as they capture different aspects of risk. In the Institute’s front crash tests, vehicles are propelled into a stationary barrier at 40 mph, so the kinetic energy involved in the crash is determined by the vehicle’s own weight. That makes IIHS safety ratings useful for comparing vehicles in the same size category but not for comparing small and large cars or cars and SUVs.

In contrast, driver death rates can be compared across vehicle classes. However, they don’t only reflect the properties of the vehicles themselves. The crash database includes driver age and gender, allowing analysts to adjust the rates to account for the facts that men are involved in more crashes than women and older drivers are more likely to be killed in a given crash than young ones, for example. They are not adjusted for other factors that might influence fatality rates, such as the speeds people drive and the number of miles they travel per day.

The low death rates for luxury vehicles and high death rates for cheaper models most likely represent that type of difference, though luxury models can be equipped with more cutting-edge safety features than some less-expensive cars. It is possible, for example, that even when the data are adjusted for age, a greater proportion of new or inexperienced drivers choose cheaper vehicles. Those working double shifts or multiple jobs may also log more miles per day than more affluent drivers.

Differences in driver behavior most likely also explain why death rates are lower for ordinary cars than for sports cars and muscle cars and lower still for wagons.

While IIHS safety ratings do not differentiate between the two-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive variants of a vehicle, in the driver death rates they are treated as two distinct models. That’s because the driver death rates are based on real-world experience, so how and where the vehicles are driven makes a difference.

On snow-covered roads and in other conditions, this experience may be different for two-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive versions. The four-wheel-drive versions also cost more than their two-wheel-drive counterparts.

“Size and power matter, as do vehicle crashworthiness and effective crash avoidance systems,” Harkey said. “But these results are also a reminder that a big part of how safe you are behind the wheel depends on how safely you drive.”

Highest rates of driver deaths
Deaths per million registered vehicle years, 2023 and equivalent earlier models, 2021-24

Lowest rates of driver deaths
Deaths per million registered vehicle years, 2023 and equivalent earlier models, 2021-24

Highest rates of other-driver deaths
Deaths per million registered vehicle years, 2023 and equivalent earlier models, 2021-24

Lowest rates of other-driver deaths
Deaths per million registered vehicle years, 2023 and equivalent earlier models, 2021-24

Driver and other-driver death rates by vehicle size and class
Deaths per million registered vehicle years, 2023 and equivalent earlier models, 2021-24