The associated video [1] gives some interesting details and context, one interesting thing is that "deaths are over 40,000 people/year for the first time in years." This appears to be due to the fact that there are more giant pickup trucks on the road.
I tested my biases, guessing that Nissan cars and Dodge trucks would have the highest due to my driving experiences. Sure enough, both led their respective categories.
I noticed the same, but only for large and extra large pickups. It actually made me feel better about driving a small/midsize pickup (Colorado). It's crazy that the extra large trucks have a 4-5x other driver death rate over a reasonably sized pickup.
That makes sense on the driver death rate, sure. I was looking at the 'other driver', meaning people they crashed into.
A small truck like a Tacoma or Colorado scores somewhere in the 40-50 range for other driver death rate. This on par with a Honda Accord, for example. In contrast, a RAM 3500 scores 189! Makes you really wonder if such things should be legal.
In my 20 year old luxo-barge car (see: a once large vehicle, average/small by today's standards), I am frequently at eye level with wheel wells and the hood is 2ft+ taller than my roofline on stock trucks. Combine that with the weight, any t-bone type accident (or pedestrians-- there is no bouncing off the hood, just absorbing the wall of energy) will be that much worse. Vehicles keep getting so much larger and are erasing any drive-train improvements in efficiency. Today's 3rd gen Tacomas (which were once a compact pickup) are similar in size to late 90's full-size domestics.
That other large SUVs like Suburbans/Tahoes (same platform as GM trucks) do not have the same opposing death rate, could suggest that things like driver behavior play an equally large role. This theory (along with the seat belt usage) could be supported by the high rates of driver fatalities in the Dodge muscle (marked as large, but RWD Hemi...) car segment.
Nissan loves sub prime leasees. Those cars get trashed/crashed and end up in even less affluent hands. The altima without a bumper is just as common as with in my area. There's a reason credit score is a major factor in your insurance rate.
I live in a high crime area 4th gen Altima is the most common getaway car in the city. If if am at a gas station with an Altima with full tint just parked I keep one eye on it all times. It seems like there was a time when honest lower income people drove used old trucks and cars that they maintained. But the US wealth level has increased to the point that we are essentially casting off 10 year old cars to be used by a criminal class that won’t bother to maintain anything, just constantly acquires cars and uses them until they break down.
It looks like there's a sample size minimum - I looked at the older reports as I'm looking into buying a used car, and it seems like there's a floor around 100,000 registered vehicle-years. Mazdas don't sell particularly well, so it makes sense that there are any that pass that threshold. There are Mazdas on the previous report, though - https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
Nissan Pathfinder 2WD Has been in (apparently) tons of crashes, that (on average) never led to the death of the driver (though the rate for opposing drivers is 110).
(a) Are risky drivers buying a certain kind of cars such as Nissan Altima and Chevy Malibu?
(b) Is driving Nissan Altima and Chevy Malibu risky?
Whenever someone says (1) A causes B, present such alternative hypotheses as (2) B causes A or (3) D causes B. Now we are left with three hypotheses to explain the same phenomenon. How to pick which of the competing hypotheses? Here we need solid reasoning to pick answers, not statistics.
A) Yes. These two are popular Rental cars and cheap throw away cars people with bad credit often buy or lease. These land on the used market where they are again bought by even lower tier bad credit or people in a bind that will take anything. And then another tier of the same bought 3rd hand for cash from tax refunds or cash jobs.
Why these drivers drive a certain way is up in the air still I guess.
"Big Altima Energy" is a common meme on car forums.
It's sad because in the 90s Nissan was still a SOLID company possibly even better than Honda and close to Toyota. We bought a 96 Maxima new a few years after coming to the US and even now as a true car enthusiast I would say that was a quality car. Nothing like that exists at Nissan today. Not even close since about 1999.
The thread says the cars are good and good value. This is what causes them to be dangerous on the road.
First they are rental, meaning they are driven hard and by drivers that don’t know the car and don’t have incentives to drive in ways that are good for breaks and engine.
Then they get put on the 2nd hand market, where the thread speculate that they are bought by people who are in a financial bind and whatever lies behind the bad decisions that led them to said bind is reflected in their driving.
This a good economical safe car attracts accidents.
It honestly isn't just that. It doesn't 'attract accidents'.
These cars attract aggressive anti social people.
I'm from the central valley. I see a lot of "big Altima energy" although you'll see it in Oakland, San Jose and those types too. Main point, I see tons of them.
They are driven beyond the legal limit of "aggressiveness" all the damn time. Someone speeding through a parking lot.. Altima. Someone running a read light.. Altima. Someone doing illegal crazy uturns? Altima. Believe me, you do not want to start road raging with an Altima owner either.
Obviously these actions aren't the sole property of Altima owners. Dodge Chargers are also maniacs in their own way. But there is definitely something very statistically significant about the insanity of a disproportionate number of Altima owners.
I'm not sure the value connection can't be the largest factor. If you feel forced to buy a car and drive because you live in a car only area, I can see why you would buy the best value one and be a pretty hostile driver who occasionally decides to "have fun" with it.
They seem like the road equivalent of waitresses who only wear the minimum flair.
Another way: compare midsize luxury cars with midsize regular cars. People who buy midsize luxury cars die less often, and so do the people they're in crashes with.
Statistics is partof the solid reasoning you need here. The technical name is called causal inference and it lets you figure out how the statistics would differ based on which is true.
> “We typically find that smaller vehicles have high driver death rates because they don’t provide as much protection, especially in crashes with larger, heavier SUVs and pickups,” said IIHS President David Harkey.
So basically, unsurprisingly, the problem is too many SUVs and pickups. Unfortunately, the American response has been to buy more SUVs and pickups rather than fewer.
Unfortunately that's the logical choice for an individual, and it's not unique to America (the percentage of SUVs is increasing in Europe too). Probably needs some type of legislative action to curb the arms race.
My subjective guess is that the problem is starting to spill into adjacent domains, for example I've noticed that most of the decorative hedgerows in shopping center parking lots are now cut to a height that is consistently above the eye level and in some cases even the roofline of passenger cars. This makes it extremely difficult to safely turn into traffic flows inside the parking lot, unless of course you're in a vehicle that's lifted up above these hedgerows.
I wondered how people who inspected the work of the folks who cut these hedgerows didn't notice that it blocks sight lines for everyone who isn't in a pickup truck or large SUV. Then it became obvious, that both the people who do this kind of work as well as the sort of people who inspect it are both very likely themselves to be completely habituated to truck level sight lines and forget what it looks like for passenger cars.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadThe associated video [1] gives some interesting details and context, one interesting thing is that "deaths are over 40,000 people/year for the first time in years." This appears to be due to the fact that there are more giant pickup trucks on the road.
[0] https://go.iihs.org/news-death-rates
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR-MAfBBuOc
Trucks don't seem much safer for occupants, while being much worse than expected for other parties.
A small truck like a Tacoma or Colorado scores somewhere in the 40-50 range for other driver death rate. This on par with a Honda Accord, for example. In contrast, a RAM 3500 scores 189! Makes you really wonder if such things should be legal.
That other large SUVs like Suburbans/Tahoes (same platform as GM trucks) do not have the same opposing death rate, could suggest that things like driver behavior play an equally large role. This theory (along with the seat belt usage) could be supported by the high rates of driver fatalities in the Dodge muscle (marked as large, but RWD Hemi...) car segment.
What kind of car is this?
(b) Is driving Nissan Altima and Chevy Malibu risky?
Whenever someone says (1) A causes B, present such alternative hypotheses as (2) B causes A or (3) D causes B. Now we are left with three hypotheses to explain the same phenomenon. How to pick which of the competing hypotheses? Here we need solid reasoning to pick answers, not statistics.
Why these drivers drive a certain way is up in the air still I guess.
"Big Altima Energy" is a common meme on car forums.
While on the road, I treat all Nissans as potential accidents waiting to happen.
First they are rental, meaning they are driven hard and by drivers that don’t know the car and don’t have incentives to drive in ways that are good for breaks and engine.
Then they get put on the 2nd hand market, where the thread speculate that they are bought by people who are in a financial bind and whatever lies behind the bad decisions that led them to said bind is reflected in their driving.
This a good economical safe car attracts accidents.
These cars attract aggressive anti social people.
I'm from the central valley. I see a lot of "big Altima energy" although you'll see it in Oakland, San Jose and those types too. Main point, I see tons of them.
They are driven beyond the legal limit of "aggressiveness" all the damn time. Someone speeding through a parking lot.. Altima. Someone running a read light.. Altima. Someone doing illegal crazy uturns? Altima. Believe me, you do not want to start road raging with an Altima owner either.
Obviously these actions aren't the sole property of Altima owners. Dodge Chargers are also maniacs in their own way. But there is definitely something very statistically significant about the insanity of a disproportionate number of Altima owners.
They seem like the road equivalent of waitresses who only wear the minimum flair.
People who get DUIs might be more likely to buy certain types of cars, but no type of car makes someone drink and drive
So basically, unsurprisingly, the problem is too many SUVs and pickups. Unfortunately, the American response has been to buy more SUVs and pickups rather than fewer.
I wondered how people who inspected the work of the folks who cut these hedgerows didn't notice that it blocks sight lines for everyone who isn't in a pickup truck or large SUV. Then it became obvious, that both the people who do this kind of work as well as the sort of people who inspect it are both very likely themselves to be completely habituated to truck level sight lines and forget what it looks like for passenger cars.