New Study Shows Size Matters for Vehicle Safety

Results from a new study examining real world crash data have created a list of the safest and most dangerous vehicles on the market today, with large trucks and SUVs offering the most protection, while small cars left their occupants in much greater danger. Conducted by Insure, a web based insurance consultation company, the study used analysis from Personal Injury and Medical Payment records to see the kinds of damages that people suffered in accidents with more than 750 different vehicle types being sold in the United States today.

Results of study showed that large vehicles like trucks and SUVs offered much better protection for their occupants in an accident, while small city cars inflicted the most significant damages. Topping the list for vehicle safety was the massive GMC Sierra 1500 pickup truck, followed by the equally large Porsche Cayenne SUV, and GMC’s Yukon Denali SUV, Sierra 2500HD pickup, and Terrain SLE1 Crossover. The newly introduced Fiat 500 was the most unsafe, followed by the Kia Rio, Toyota Corolla, Mitsubishi Lancer, and Mercedes Benz CL600. Clearly, size is a determining factor.

"If safety is a priority, you should avoid the smallest cars," says Russ Rader, a spokesman from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "The laws of physics are always in place in crashes. Weight counts. Smaller, lighter cars are safer than they used to be, but all things being equal, people riding in bigger, heavier vehicles get more protection in crashes."

With more steel surrounding them and buffering the force of impact in a crash, it is only logical that these much larger vehicles would offer more protection. Their sheer size also means that other vehicles colliding with it are likely smaller, inflicting lesser damage than what is being received from the massive vehicle. In a smaller vehicle like the Toyota Corolla, less mass means a greater amount of force will be transferred to the occupants inside, inflicting much more significant harm. Small cars like this are also in constant danger of crashing into vehicles much larger than them.

Insure’s survey results are likely to sit poorly with some automakers however, as vehicles like the Fiat 500 have actually performed well in federal crash testing, though their testing analyses the effects of a crash on a test dummy, rather than on a real person in an actual accident. Within their vehicle class, these smaller vehicles do offer protection to the best they can for their size, and comparing their ability to massive trucks and SUVs may be unfair.

As safety has become the single largest factor for new car buyers, these results pose and interesting problem to car makers, as smaller and more efficient vehicles have long been seen as the best direction to go. Large vehicles like trucks and SUVs therefore hold a paradoxical relationship with the car buying public, offering the greatest level of safety while being the single least desirable vehicles on the road, often targeted as being harmful to the health of the planet. Until greater safety technologies are developed to better protect small car drivers in the event of an accident, they will always carry the greatest threat for injury. For drivers looking to stay safest on the road: bigger is better.