There are many things you can do to protect your family from injuries in a car accident. Some of them are obvious, drive within the speed limit, wear safety belts and do not drive under the influence of alcohol. But what do you do to protect your family from the other driver, the other guy who is a reckless or drunk driver? One way is to ensure that you are in as safe a vehicle as possible. There are many resources to investigate how safe your vehicle is. In the United States the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, IIHS, and the Australian Automobile Association, ANCAP, compile a Driver Death Rate report based on government data on deaths in motor vehicle accidents. To find out the death rate from auto accidents for certain vehicles you can also check with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA has a website with statistics showing the death rates from car crashes in various vehicles.
One consistent finding is that the lightest cars have dramatically higher occupant death rates. Alternatively, full size pickup trucks and SUVs are associated with very high death rates in other vehicles than found when comparing the other vehicle death rates caused by comparabling heavy passenger vehicles. Another way to look at is that light cars are unsafe for you and heavy trucks and SUV’s are unsafe for other cars.
For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Car and Motorcycle Accidents.
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