<p>newmassdad, Right, I did mention that, as well, although IIHS tries to adjust or control for driver demographics. For example they use data for women aged 25-64 only when determining the numbers for the model to model driver death rates, and similarly they say they do control for this on the injury stats as well.</p>
<p>I wish I could find the article I had. The title asked the question how does one really determine what the safest car is or can you? The conclusion is that you really have to use a combination of the info out there to do that. Don’t be fooled by crash tests alone, though, especially the NHSTA star ratings which are not nearly as stringent as the IIHS ones. What those are really telling you is how well your car might do in an accident with another of the same weight and size. Put a 2000 pound car with a five star crash rating up against a 5000 pounder with a lesser crash rating in a multi vehicle accident and the laws of physics dictate that the occupant of the smaller vehicle will likely be the one that fares poorly.</p>
<p>Yet another (depressing) resource just to “drive” you crazy is the driver death rates. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.iihs.org/sr/pdfs/sr4003.pdf[/url]”>http://www.iihs.org/sr/pdfs/sr4003.pdf</a></p>
<p>Dated, since they only do this every few years but some models are still similar today, and certainly relevant for the purchase of used cars. Again, they <em>did</em> try to control for the age and sex demographics, but certainly there could still be an influence as to “driver type.” In particular, page 10 is interesting to see the comparison of different cars by weight. It’s also useful to compare a vehicle to itself, ie are most of the fatalities that occured caused by multivehicle accidents (where weight may be a big factor) single car accidents or rollovers.</p>
<p>OP, this was probably WAY more than you wanted to know!</p>