Arms race on the road

I have long known there is a bit of an arms race on the road. People get larger cars so they are not the smaller car in an accident. What I did not realize is how much cars vary.


A driver of a Kia Rio is more than 150 times as likely to be killed as a driver of a Honda Odyssey. That is a bigger spread than I would have expected but the trend is not surprising; more surprising, someone driving a Chevrolet Suburban or Silverado is four to five times as likely to be killed as someone driving a Toyota Prius. There is a pretty clear weight verses safety relationship, but it is really spotty, with a few very large vehicles being quite dangerous and a few small vehicles being relatively safe.