What vehicles are actually safer?

[aviken]

There are oh so many ways to look at the numbers.

Just some thoughts...
What defines a car as safe? Number of deaths, or number of injuries, or some of both?
Then are we talking number of deaths for the vehicle driven, or other vehicles in the collision...to illustrate the complexity -

A Camry with 2 people in it collides with a Suburban that has 6 people in it. Lets say that that in the Camry, 1 person was killed, and one sustained moderate injuries, broken leg & bruises, etc...let's assume the suburban afterwards went off the road, and rolled onto it's side, killing 2 people, moderately injuring 2 others, while the other 2 were only shaken up.

Do we say that the Camry is safer because it had half as many deaths as the Suburban (1 to 2)?
Or is the Suburban safer because only 33% of occupants were killed opposed to 50% in the Camry (2 of 6 vs 1 of 2)?
Do we say the Camry is safer because the Camry had half as many injuries as the Suburban? (1 to 2)?
Or is the Suburban safer because only 33% of occupants were injured opposed to 50% in the Camry (2 of 6 vs 1 of 2)?
Do we say that the Camry is less safe because 100% of the occupants were either killed or hospitalized, vs 67% in the Suburban (2 of 6 unharmed)?
Or do we say the Suburban is less safe because it injured and per vehicle, twice as many people were killed or inured (hospitalized)?
But wait, it gets more complicated...
How much weight of the accident to we give to the Camry vs. the Suburban? That is, had the Camry hit another Camry, would the death / injuries be less or more? If the Suburban had hit a larger vehicle, would it have not still had the momentum to careen off the road, and roll over?
This is but one illustration and you can decide how to pull apart the numbers. Without going into too many other variables, keep in mind they track other things in accidents - at least involving fatalities. Was alcohol involved? How about Speeding? I don't have the facts to back it up, but I'll bet that fatalities in Corvettes where speeding was involved is higher than that of a VW Rabbit. I'm sure there are skews to the alcohol related collisions as well.

Part of the problem is that you can't separate the driver from the vehicle in these studies. I guess if you have enough numbers, it becomes less relevant - but I think it's much more complicated than some of the numbers might indicate.






Does it take into consideration if seatbelts were being worn?