The Nissan Leaf is one of my favorite electric cars on the market due to its affordability and functionality. As car technology continues to improve, I’m happy to note that it is no longer necessary to choose between one’s safety and one’s wallet; these days, you get to keep both. I’ve written about the Leaf’s 3-across combinations here, and it can absolutely be used to haul a family of five around town and beyond without burning gasoline.

On the other hand, many families might opt for the much larger Nissan Pathfinder (or its badge twin, the Infiniti QX60. Both are midsized SUVs and both have their place, although most families would likely be able to meet much of their goals in the Leaf instead of in the Pathfinder or QX60. Many families, especially those with a safety bent, might automatically dismiss the Leaf for the Pathfinder in the mistaken belief that the Pathfinder / QX60 will be the safer choice due to its much larger size and heft–the 2014-2017 Leaf weighs around 3,300 pounds while the 2015-2020 Pathfinder typically clocks in at around 4,400 pounds. However, long time readers will note that I’ve written extensively about how the way we drive and where we drive are far more important factors in determining whether we make it home at the end of the day than what we’re driving once we’re past basic safety standards, and the IIHS continues to support this idea through their latest batch of driver death rate data. According to their sampling from the NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, or FARS, all three vehicles–the small electric Leaf car, the midsized Pathfinder SUV, and the midsized luxury QX60 SUV–are equally capable of keeping their drivers alive.

How do we know this? It comes from IIHS calculations on driver death rates for recently sold (2014-2017) vehicles in the US. While the calculations still fall prey to large confidence intervals and still fail to consier two of the three most meaningful factors in auto safety–how we’re driving and what we’re driving–they still provide information worth considering. This is the newest IIHS driver death rate report and it comes from the May, 28, 2020 Status Report (Volume 55, Number 2). I wrote a batch of these articles when the last report was released, and it’s already that time to write some more. I’ve previously covered the Leaf’s safety as a small vehicle here in comparison to a Prius and Volt and here in comparison to large SUVs and pickup trucks; the story will not be too different here, as the best practices described above continue to apply. Today we’ll take a look at three offerings from NIssan: the Leaf, the Pathfinder, and the QX60, which technically is an Infiniti but is still a Nissan underneath, in order to figure out whether there’s any safety advantage to putting your family in any of the three over the others.

2014-2017 Nissan Leaf – 5 driver deaths (0-14)

According to the IIHS report, the Nissan Leaf, a small electric car, had a driver death rate of 5 in the 2014-2017 model years, with five predicted fatalities occurring from single vehicle crashes and none from multiple vehicle crashes. These predictions were based on an exposure of 164,259 registered vehicle years and a 95% confidence bound of 0-14.

This doesn’t mean that 5 drivers died driving Nissan Leafs of the aforementioned model years between 2015 and 2018, the surveyed years in the study. Instead it means that the IIHS made a model incorporating NHTSA fatality data on 2014-2017 model year Nissan Leafs and IHS Markit Automotive (now S & P Global Mobility) data on registered Leafs to calculate driver death rates per million registered vehicle years. A registered vehicle year is the equivalent of one registered vehicle being driven for a year. The rates were adjusted for the differing risks posed by drivers by age and gender. Their analysis suggests that, for example, if 1 million drivers drove 1 million of the aforementioned Leafs for a full year in the US, we would expect 5 of them to die over the course of the year.

This is really, really good. It also echoes prior IIHS driver death rate findings for the Leaf, such as when the 2011-2014 Leaf was estimated to have a driver death rate of 8.

2014-2017 Nissan Pathfinder 4WD – 20 driver deaths (3-37)

Next we take a look at the 4WD trim level of the 2014-2017 Nissan Pathfinder. The IIHS predicted a driver death rate of 20 between 2015-2018, with 7 predicted fatal multiple vehicle crashes and 14 fatal single vehicle crashes with 12 of them occurring from rollovers. As we’ve seen in a number of other death rate analyses, the crash figures don’t add up to the predicted death rate due to statistical rounding. The exposure came from 450,004 vehicles years with a confidence bound of 3 to 37.

Once again, the general idea here is that if 1 million drivers drove 1 million 4WD Pathfinders around for a year in the US, we’d expect 20 of them to die, with 2/3rds of those fatalities occurring in single vehicle crashes and the vast majority of those occurring from rollovers. These results aren’t linear, but they are proportional. In other words, when fatal crashes occurred in the Pathfinder, they typically were single vehicle crashes and they were almost always due to rollovers when they came from single vehicle crashes.

It’s worth remembering that there is no provable statistical difference between the Pathfinder’s results and those of the Leaf, despite the nominal difference in driver death rates. This is evident because the confidence intervals overlap (0-14 in the Leaf, 3-37 in the 4WD Pathfinder), meaning the true driver death rates of both vehicles could be identical and the predicted driver death rate differences purely due to chance. In the absence of additional data (for example, P values), we cannot conclude that there is a statistical difference in these results.

The 2WD trim had a nearly identical (and again, statistically identical) driver death rate of 25 with a slightly larger confidence bound of 5 to 45 and a correspondingly smaller exposure level of 386,988. Once again, we cannot say the Leaf was statistically safer than the 2WD Pathfinder in the absence of more data, and we definitely can’t say the 4WD Pathfinder was safer than the 2WD Pathfinder due to their massively overlapping confidence intervals. The safest conclusion is that all three vehicles were statistically identical in safety.

2014-2017 Infiniti QX60 2WD – 0 driver deaths (0-26)

The Infiniti QX60 is essentially the Nissan Pathfinder with additional luxury features. A potential advantage of the QX60, which was formerly known as the JX35, over the Pathfinder, is the inclusion of advanced safety features such as lane departure or blind spot warnings.

Unlike with the Pathfinder, the 2WD QX60 registered a lower driver death rate than its 4WD trim twin. The predicted rate was zero with a 0-26 confidence interval and 144,301 registered vehicle years of exposure.

As was the case with the Pathfinder, there was only a slight difference in driver death rates between the 2WD and  4WD trim levels and it was not statistically significant. The 4WD trim had a predicted driver death rate of 9 with all fatalities occurring from single vehicle crashes and a third of those from rollovers. The exposure was 243,080 registered vehicle years, leading to a tighter confidence interval of 0-20.

It’s worth noting here that the confidence intervals of both trim levels almost completely overlapped; that of the 2WD was smaller because there was more data in terms of more registered vehicle years, reducing uncertainty in the statistical model. Practically speaking again, there was no difference whatsoever in predicted safety across vehicles.

How can the Nissan Leaf be as safe as the Pathfinder or QX60 if the SUVs are so much bigger than the small car?

This is the part where we directly compare all three vehicles and 5 trim levels. Despite the fact that the Pathfinder and QX60 are much longer, wider, taller, and heavier vehicles than the Nissan Leaf, none of them were statistically safer. In other words, the math suggests that you’d be equally safe in any of the three vehicles.

Remember: despite popular belief, your big car, truck, or SUV will not protect you in a highway crash. Vehicular size isn’t nearly as important in most driving conditions as adherence to best practices in driving behaviors and in road selection.

We can’t say there was a difference between any of the vehicles because all of their confidence bounds overlapped, and in some cases, quite heavily.  The 95% confidence bounds tell us where the true driver death rate would be located 95% of the time we looked for it by sampling the cars and drivers (e.g., sampling 1 million drivers driving 1 million Leafs for a year or 2 million drivers driving 2 million Pathfinders for 6 months or 250,000 drivers driving 250,000 QX60s for 4 years, etc).

According to the model, the true driver death rate of the Leaf would almost fall between 0 and 14 while that of the 4WD Pathfinder would almost always land between 3 and 37. The 2WD QX60’s true driver death rate would almost always land between 0 and 26. Statistically speaking, we can’t say any of these vehicles is safer than the other without more data. This applies as well to the 2WD Pathfinder with its 5 to 45 confidence interval and the 4WD QX60 with its 0 to 20 confidence interval. Practically speaking, all four of these vehicles provided the same levels of safety to their drivers.

Is it possible the Nissan Leaf is actually safer than the Pathfinder?

I suspect there’s a chance that there was a significant difference between the Leaf and the Pathfinders since the majorities of their confidence intervals did not overlap; the Leaf only shared 34% of its confidence interval with the 4WD Pathfinder (3-14, or 12 parts of its range vs 3-37, or 35), and only 24% of its confidence interval with the 2WD Pathfinder (5-14, or 10, vs 5 to 45, or 41). However, once again, without additional data, I can’t say that this wasn’t due to chance. And if the difference weren’t due to chance, it would be in favor of the Leaf, meaning Leaf drivers had a lower fatality rate than Pathfinder drivers in the model and calendar years observed.

What about the Pathfinder vs the QX60? Is one safer than the other?

Once again, there was no statistically significant difference between the two that can be declared without additional data. While there were nominal differences in the predicted driver death rates, there were once again significant statistical overlaps in confidence intervals, and the safest conclusion (and most logical one) is that the essentially identical vehicles performed essentially identically in real world conditions. If there actually were a safety difference between the vehicles in the data, I would expect it to come from driver differences–namely that QX60 owners might be more careful drivers due to driving more expensive vehicles or being more educated drivers (who are less likely to engage in risky road behaviors) or being more likely to use seat belts. It’s also possible that the differences, if any existed, could have come from additional safety features in the QX60. However, statistically speaking, both vehicles were likely the same in terms of safety offered.

Does this mean that my husband, wife, kids, or family are just as safe in a Nissan Leaf as they would be in a Pathfinder or QX60 or any other midsized SUV?

According to the IIHS’ math, yes. All three vehicles featured the same core safety features, such as good frontal and side crash scores, side airbags with head protection, and ESC, and I would expect these benefits to extend to passengers in addition to drivers. All of these vehicles are great choices for a family, and I would feel fortunate to have my family in any of them. Once you reach this level of vehicular safety, the difference in whether or not you make it home each day will have far more to do with how you drive and where you drive than what you drive.

In a nutshell, drive at safe speeds, follow best practices with car seats, and choose safe roads.

Following these principles will increase your family’s chances of both avoiding and surviving car crashes to a greater extent than any benefits you’d get from choosing any car you can currently buy or that the IIHS or NHTSA can possibly recommend.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

There are a few themes I drive home in nearly every post on the CCD. One involves the need to use best practices the moment you become aware of them, rather than wait for institutions like governments or corporations to acknowledge them. Another has to do with an understanding of what happens when best practices are followed vs what happens when they aren’t due to a lack of knowledge or discipline. A third is perhaps even more fundamental: the need to identify what best practices are, followed by the decision to follow them. This might be the most challenging, as it involves the most detective work as well as the most discipline. However, without it, the other processes don’t matter; you can’t discuss crash scenarios when you have no idea why they occurred or what could have been done differently, and you can’t advocate for best practices if you don’t know what they are.

This brings us to today’s topic: the Nissan NV Passenger Van, or NV3500. It’s one of the most popular choices today in the United States among large families, religious groups, and school and para school functions, along with competing vans like the GMC Savana, Ram ProMaster City, and Ford Transit. However, this is where the cracks start forming in the ice. First, full-sized vans have a spotty safety record. In a country that’s no stranger to avoiding safety mandates, we literally have laws against where such vans can be used as legitimate forms of transportation. Full-sized vans can’t be sold or leased as new vehicles to schools because of how unsafe they’re considered to be compared to school buses unless they include a number of additional features and safety standards under FMVSS regulations that apply to school buses and Multifunction school activity buses, or MFSABs (full-sized or short buses not used for transport during school hours). With that noted, full-sized vans are also less likely to be thoroughly crash tested by our two primary crash testing organizations in the United States, the NHTSA, or National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and the IIHS, or Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. We can somewhat excuse the IIHS since they’re a private organization, although that does again illustrate the drawbacks of placing public safety issues in the hands of private corporations, but there is no excuse whatsoever for the NHTSA to refrain from testing any full-sized van to the same degree as any other non-bus-sized vehicle intended for public transportation. But that’s where we are right now.

Which crash tests has the NHTSA and IIHS conducted on the NV3500?

As of this writing (February 2020), the NHTSA has never performed a crash test on the Nissan NV Passenger Van, the NV3500. The IIHS has never crash tested the NV3500. In other words, there are no publically available standardized crash tests in the United States for this vehicle that are comparable to crash tests for any other vehicle in the country. To go a step further, the IIHS has never published a standardized crash test for any full-sized van made in the 21st century.

What does this mean?

It means that if you buy an NV3500, you literally have no idea how it will perform in a crash. Yes, it includes ESC, which is great; that’s the biggest development in car safety since frontal and side airbags and the lap and shoulder seat belt. Yes, it includes side curtain airbags. Yes, Nissan says it’s safe. But have you ever heard a car manufacturer say otherwise before public or governmental pressure forced it to? No. The truth is that we don’t know what the NV3500 would do in a full frontal crash, in a moderate overlap crash, in a small overlap crash on the driver’s side, in a small overlap crash on the passenger’s side, or in a side pole crash. We also don’t know how many times its weight it can support, because it’s never been roof crush tested. These are all tests the NHTSA and IIHS peform on nearly every passenger vehicle sold today in the United States. But these test results don’t exist for the NV3500, a van designed to carry 12 people at highway speeds on public roads. It could be a death trap for all we know, because we simply don’t know.

Why is it important to have this information, and how could we get it?

When I write about side impact crush resistance and how the Honda Odyssey is the safest minivan in the country due to a B-pillar crush resistance of 21.5 cm as measured in the IIHS side impact test, that tells you something. You have an idea of exactly where that minivan and that rating stand in comparison to every other minivan sold, as well as every other car or SUV or pickup truck you’re likely to consider. But that number–as well as just about every other safety-based number–is missing when it comes to the NV3500. How much would that B-pillar hold? I have no idea, and you don’t either, because it’s not publically available information.

Could we find out?

Sure, with around $40,000, which is what it would cost to buy an NV3500 and contract a private agency to test it (or buy the equipment to do so yourself). But much like paying for your own heart surgery out of pocket (or sending your spouse to medical school in order to get the job done in-house), that’s beyond the reach of most individuals, which is precisely why we pool risk and huge expenses through governmental programs. In this case, the relevant governmental program would be the NHTSA. In the private sector, it would be the IIHS. However, neither has stepped up to the plate, and since the IIHS is a private institution, it has no legal obligation to do so. Technically, neither does the NHTSA, but it does have a functional and moral obligation to do so, as it is funded entirely by public dollars to serve the public good. And it is negligent to eschew crash testing of vehicles used by private individuals and sold in significant numbers simply due to bureaucracy.

Is there a way to convince the NHTSA to test the NV3500?

Certainly! You can write letters and emails, but this is unlikely to get results, as big organizations don’t listen to little people unless we speak in large enough numbers; Dr. Seuss famously noted as much in Horton Hears a Who! The practical way of getting this done will be if someone famous enough dies in an NV, much as how the FAA is highly likely to mandate TAWS in helicopters after the Calabasas crash involving Kobe Bryant and 8 other victims, despite ignoring NHTSA recommendations for more than 10 years and counting. The problem here is that it might take a lot of little people dying (and most likely will) before a big person does, especially since the big people are more likely to use giant coach buses. Alternatively, if a large number of little people die at once, such as in a crash involving many dead schoolchildren, the public outcry again would likely drive the NHTSA to action. However, since the NHTSA already banned the new sale of such vans for school purposes unless they included school bus-type enhancements, such deaths are unlikely to occur.

In other words, we’re probably going to continue waiting for a while for these results, barring a surprisingly large number of newsworthy deaths involving NV3500s. Which is awful. But that’s how our government tends to work when it comes to road safety.

Does this mean we don’t buy the NV3500 until it’s crash tested?

In my opinion, yes. Don’t reinforce the government’s irresponsibility by purchasing vehicles it refuses to crash test. It’s not your job to be the dummy; there are perfectly good ones out there used each day in crash testing facilities.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that, as noted earlier, no full-sized van currently sold has ever been tested by the IIHS, although the Ford Transit has been tested by the NHTSA in frontal, side, and pole collisions (and has done well). You simply aren’t going to get a complete picture of full-size van safety relative to minivan, car, pickup, or SUV safety right now in the United States.

That said, if you already have an NV3500, this doesn’t mean you have to sell it. As I’ve always noted and continue to do on the CCD, the lion’s share of difference in whether you make it home to your loved ones each night or not isn’t what you drive, but how and where you drive. Focus on those elements and you’ll be safer in an NV than just about anyone you see driving just about anything else on the road.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.