Tag Archives: autosafety

Why Higher Speed Limits Decrease Safety, Increase Deaths

unsplash - jajeh - speedingHigher speed limits, like an entire bag of Hershey’s Kisses, are one of those things that sound good but really aren’t good for you. Politicians love them because they know people won’t oppose them. After all, who would object to being able to speed a bit more on the highway? It’s something we all do anyway, right?

The problem is that speeding is already a factor in 1 out of every 3 auto fatalities in the United States, which means that if you speed, or if someone else does, your life and the lives of your loved ones automatically become less safe. So why do we keep letting our elected leaders lead us into bad decisions?

Let’s take a look at speed limits throughout the US, what we know about how speed affects crash forces, and then tie this into what we can do to increase the safety of those we love on the road.

How are daytime speed limits distributed throughout the United States?

Speed limits throughout the US range from 60 mph in one state, Hawaii, to 85 mph in sections of Texas. Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota are nearly as bad with PSLs (posted speed limits) at 80. The remaining states are mostly at 75 or 70 mph, with several New England states (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont) and Alaska at 65 mph.

How have speed limits changed over time in the US?

Speed limits have increased nearly uniformly throughout the states since 1995, when the National Highway System Designation Act repealed a 55 mph speed limit set by Congress in 1973. Prior to then, most states had had speed limits between 65 and 70 mph, and since then, particularly in recent years, many states have begun pushing ever higher speed limits, with potentially deadly consequences.

How do higher speeds increase the likelihoods of a crash?

Higher speeds make crashes more likely because there are finite limits on both human reaction times and vehicular braking times and distances. Research suggests human reaction times vary from moment to moment and situation to situation, but even using a conservative estimate of 2 seconds, a car stopping distance calculator and measurement comparer provides discomforting numbers:

At 20 mph, a speed at which 5% of pedestrians are likely to be killed when struck by a vehicle, 2 seconds of reaction time lead to 59 feet of “thinking” distance, or the time needed to see a hazard, decide to brake, and press the brakes. Beyond that, you also need 20 feet of braking distance, resulting in 79 feet of total stopping distance. That’s already more than the length of a semi-trailer and cab, or nine-tenths as long as the distance between bases in baseball.

How about at 40 mph? That’s a speed at which around 95% of pedestrians are likely to be killed when struck by a vehicle. It’s also a speed which the IIHS considers a severe crash when involving head-on collisions, and it’s the speed at which they conduct their moderate and small frontal overlap crash tests.

At 40 mph, 2 seconds of reaction time lead to 117 feet of “thinking” distance. Add 80 feet of braking distance, and you get 197 feet of total stopping distance, or nine-tenths the wingspan of a 747, or half the length of an NFL football field.

At 60 mph, which is slower than the highway PSLs in most states in the US (never mind the speeds people are actually reaching), it takes 176 feet just to *process* something enough to hit the brakes in 2 seconds. That’s already about the entire distance it takes to see, react, and stop before a hazard at 40 mph. However, things aren’t done there; you also need 180 feet of braking distance, which doubles your stopping distance and brings you to 356 feet.

That’s the length of a football field (NFL or soccer).

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked out at a football field and imagined not being able to avoid hitting a car parked at the end of it, but that’s a huge distance to deal with in an emergency situation.

At 80 mph, a speed legally permissible, at least in part, in 7 states, and a speed which many drivers in another 20 or so states regularly reach due to 70-75 mph limits, there’s practically no hope of avoiding an emergency. With 2 seconds of thinking time, you need 235 feet just to begin with, or a full 2/3rds of that NFL field / soccer pitch we just visualized, and another 320 feet to brake, bringing you to 554 feet, or around 1.5 football fields.

Why do higher speeds make collisions more likely to be fatal?

Higher speeds make collisions much more likely to be fatal because energy increases with the square of velocity. This is a fancy way of saying that increasing the speed of an object affects the force of a collision much more than increasing how much it weighs. It’s why being hit by a bullet shot out of a gun hurts a lot more (sometimes fatally more) than being hit by a bullet thrown at you.

Here’s a quick example with numbers thanks to a kinetic energy calculator:

At 20 mph, a prototypical mid-sized 3,200 lb car (e.g., a Toyota Camry) has 58,014 J of energy, or 58 KJ. At 40 mph, if energy increased linearly, we’d expect the Camry to carry 116 KJ of energy, or 200% as much as it did at 20 mph (due to 40 being 2 x 20).

However, it doesn’t.

Instead, it has 232 KJ, or 400% of (4x) the energy it carried when traveling at 20 mph. The speed was doubled, but the forces were quadrupled.

This is what it means for energy to increase with the square of the velocity. The energy in a collision increases much more quickly with speed than it does with weight. Or to put it simply, although the speed was merely doubled, the forces were quadrupled.

Our hypothetical Camry will be tested by the IIHS in what simulates a 40 mph collision with another Camry, resulting in a transfer of energy of 232 KJ. A Camry receiving a “good” frontal score is one that dissipated that energy without transferring so much of it into the driver that the driver dies. This, as I wrote before, is already considered to be a severe collision.

So what happens at highway speeds?

Well, at 60 mph, the Camry suddenly has 522 KJ of energy, or 900% of the energy it carried when traveling at 20 mph (rather than 300%, which you’d expect from 60 being 3 x 20). It has 225% of the energy it carried when traveling at 40 mph (rather than 150%, which you’d expect from 60 being 1.5 x 40).

To put it another way, the Camry needs to dissipate 9x as much energy at 60 mph as it did at 20 mph, or 2.25x as much energy at 60 mph as it did at 40 mph. Many people can’t handle receiving 225% as much energy as their vehicles are designed to protect them from, which is why there are many fatalities from head on collisions at 60 mph. Many of these fatalities would have been survivable at 40 mph.

At 80 mph, death is nearly certain. The Camry has a whopping 928 KJ of energy, or 400% (4x) as much energy as it did at 40 mph, even though it’s “only” going twice as quickly. It has 178% of the energy it did when traveling at 60 mph, or nearly 2x as much, even though it’s “only” 20 mph faster.

Remember–crash tests are conducted at 40 mph for head on collisions, and there are a great many fatalities at 60 mph. At 80 mph, you or your loved ones have virtually no chance of survival in a crash, because the human body is not designed to sustain 400% of the forces at which cars are designed to make survivable (those at 40 mph collisions). The math doesn’t work.

How do we make people follow speed limits?

This is an excellent question. Basically, we have to enforce them, whether through police patrols or speed cameras. As long as it’s permissible from state to state to exceed speed limits by 5, 10, or even 20 mph, we’ll continue to see needless tragedies. As long as speeding is socially acceptable, people will speed in the belief that they are uncatchable, invincible, and perfectly in control of their safety and their vehicles.

They aren’t. Driving the speed limit–or below it–is one of the most effective steps you can take to increase your safety and the safety of your loved ones every single time you drive.

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Driving in Norway Safer than Driving in US (And Reasons Why)

Driving safely...how do we bring that to the US?
Driving safely…how do we bring that to the US?

Recently, I wrote about how Norway, the ice palace that served as the geographic inspiration for Frozen (yes, really), was on the verge of completing their first year since the introduction of the automobile without a single child fatality. That’s right–not a single child under 10 had died a traffic-related death in Norway in 2015 as of early December (3 under 15 would eventually die). This is admirable, and shows just how effective a nationwide effort to practice extended rear-facing can be. It also shows how far we have to go as a nation in the US before we reach the point where virtually no children die due to auto traffic.

That said, I got to wondering: if the roads were that safe for children in Norway, could they also be safer for adults?

The answer is…yes!

It’s safer to be a driver or passenger in Norway than in the US

Per the article in The Local Norway, 113 Norwegians had died on the roadways as of November 2015, making this the safest year so far. In comparison, last year, 147 had died. Let’s use last year’s number and compare it to the 2013 (the most recent available) death toll in the United States: 32,719.

In 2014, there were 5.156 million Norwegians and 147 road deaths. In other words, there were 28.5 road fatalities per million Norwegians, or 2.85 road fatalities per 100,000.

In 2013, there were 316.5 million Americans and 32,719 road deaths in 2013. This figures out to 103.4 road fatalities per million Americans, or 10.34 road fatalities per 100,000.

The ratio of US road deaths to Norwegian road deaths last year, then, was 3.6. In other words, you were almost 4 times more likely to die by auto traffic as an American than a Norwegian.

That’s huge.

To put it another way, if our death rate had been as low as Norway’s, even when scaled up to our much larger population, we would only have lost around 9,092 men, women, and children instead of 32,719. Close to 24,000 lives could have been saved.

Why are Norwegian drivers so much less likely to die than American drivers?

Let’s see what Jan Johansen, the director of Trygg Trafikk (TT), the Norwegian Council for Road Safety, had to say:

“Norwegians have become much better in traffic. People have better attitudes, we have gotten better roads and safer vehicles than we had ten to 15 years ago.”

So drivers in Norway are presumably safer, less aggressive ones. The infrastructure has been improved, in terms of road safety, and the vehicles have been safer.

None of this is magic. We could do all of this here.

How to reduce driver deaths in the US compared to Norway

Regarding the driver component, I’ve written before about how a full 50% of car crash deaths are due to single vehicle crashes–the kind where a driver veers off the road and rolls over or crashes into a tree. Those can be prevented, by far and large, simply by driving at or *below* the speed limit, as well as by driving sober, since both speeding and alcohol are implicated in 1/3rd of vehicular fatalities every single year in the United States.

Of course, additional factors like driving with head lights, driving during the day time, and driving as little as possible also make a significant difference. Norwegians, for example, drive on average 9,300 miles a year, compared to approximately 13,500 miles a year in the US. Since every mile increases your exposure to unsafe drivers, fatigue, poor weather, or other factors beyond your control, no matter how safe of a vehicle you drive or how safe of a driver you are, the less time you spend in a vehicle, the less likely you are to die while driving (or being a passenger).

Regarding infrastructure, simply installing dividers on every road with 40+ mph traffic would go a long way toward reducing highway fatalities, as would installing speed and traffic cameras everywhere. IIf you aren’t speeding, you’re much less likely to crash; it’s that simple. And if there’s separation on high speed roadways, you’re much less likely to kill someone by crossing lanes or be killed by someone else who crossed into your lane. I’ve written about so many lane-crossing fatal collisions in the US that could have been prevented by simple barricades. There is no need for so many of the deaths on our roads.

Regarding vehicle safety, outfitting every vehicle on the road with ESC, side impact airbags, and ensuring they all had good frontal and side scores would do a great deal toward making vehicles safer. However, another crucial step would be to reduce the weight discrepancies on our roads and reduce the overall weights of road vehicles. Small cars are safer for everyone.

There’s no reason for the average driver to have access to a 5,000 pound vehicle (e.g., a large pickup truck) for commuting while other commuters are driving 2,500 pound vehicles (e.g., a subcompact car). In the US, cheap fuel, a lack of taxes based on vehicle weights, mileage, and emissions, and limitless availability of credit results in a vehicular arms race in every city and on every highway throughout the country, where people buy large vehicles because they’re afraid of being left out in the cold with small ones, or simply because they enjoy being able to be in bigger vehicles. It appeals to our lower, primitive brains, but it’s not the direction we need to head in if we’re truly interested in building a safer society.

And no, the solution isn’t to get everyone in 5,000 pound vehicles, because a.) that negates the advantages of heavier vehicles, and b.) that makes life exponentially more difficult (i.e., shorter) for people who will *never* have vehicular protection, such as children, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. And no matter what we drive, at some point during the day, every single person in this country who uses a vehicle is a pedestrian, whether through walking or through wheel-chairs. And we all deserve to live without the fear of being run over by giant vehicles.

Does this mean there’s nothing left to be done in Norway for road safety?

However, just because things are much safer in Norway, road-wise, than they are in the US, doesn’t mean Norwegians think things are good enough:

“I would also point out that there is no reason to jump for joy. So far this year, 113 people have been killed. That is 113 too many,” Johansen told Dagbladet.

He’s right; there’s still much more to be done. There’s no reason for any road deaths in any country. But at 113, they’re a lot closer to zero than we are.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Send me an email at carcrashdetective [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Safest SUV for Side Impact Crash Survival: 2017 Audi Q7

It’s no secret that I consider side impact collisions some of the most deadly situations we can encounter on the road as drivers or passengers. Unlike frontal collisions, which are more common but also have much more material, relatively speaking between us and the vehicles colliding with us, there are only a few precious inches between you and the outside of your door in a side impact collision. A few precious inches between life and death.

In far too many cases, the end result of a side impact collision is death; 1 out of every 3 auto fatalities this year will result from a t-bone collision.  I’ve written up many of these stories, but there are still far too many out there.

How do I find vehicles designed to keep my family safe from side impact crashes?

My desire to reduce the number of grieving families each year is precisely why I follow improvements in side impact crash protection design, and why I chose a metric–the degree to which vehicle structures kept away the intruding vehicle in the IIHS standard side impact test–to compare design improvements. With this information, I put together several lists a year of the safest vehicles for surviving side impacts. In 2015, I wrote up lists for the safest cars overall, the safest small cars, the safest small SUVs and crossovers, the safest minivans, and the safest SUVs overall for surviving such collisions. I promised to keep these lists updated with improvements in technology. Well, it’s 2016, and a new crop of vehicles are out. And things have changed.

xc90-ccdLast year, the best mainstream passenger vehicle you could buy to protect yourself in a side impact collision, by my metric, was the 2016 Volvo XC90. It featured a class leading 26 cm of resistance from the B-pillar to the center of the driver’s seat after a 31 mph side impact collision with a test sled simulating the equivalent of a 3,300 lb SUV (e.g., a Honda CR-V). This was the standard.

Thanks to Audi, there is a new standard.

q7 - 2017 - publicdomain

The 2017 Audi Q7‘s test results were just released by the IIHS, and it is now the leader in the side protection race with 27.5 cm of resistance. This is greater than that of any other mainstream passenger vehicle whose results are currently available. Yes, it’s possible that a vehicle like the Model S or T might test higher, but in the absence of available data, right now, I’d recommend the new Q7 to families whose ultimate priority was side impact protection over any other vehicle currently for sale.

What if I’m not in a position to buy the new Q7?

If you’re not in a position to buy the new Q7 (I’m not either!), never fear. There are still a wide range of vehicles that offer excellent levels of side impact crash protection, and many of these are available for substantially less than the Q7. The list increases still further when you consider used vehicles; the primary job of a car, after all, isn’t to look new, but to keep you safe while transporting you and your loved ones from one place to another.

If you’re looking for a comparable SUV, check out this list; it includes a range of SUVs within 7 cm of the Q7, including the aforementioned 2016 Volvo XC90, the 2014+ BMW X5, the 2011+ Mercedes-Benz GLK, the 2011+ Ford Explorer, the 2009+ Audi Q5, and the 2010+ Volvo XC60.

Are older vehicles going to offer comparable safety, though?

Yes! As long as a vehicle hasn’t been in a collision or been otherwise damaged by rust, corrosion, or flooding, you should be able to expect the same level of crash protection performance from it years or even decades after it was originally made. Airbags, for example, are designed to last for the lifetime of a vehicle without maintenance. Seat belts should be inspected after 15 years or so, and replaced as needed if they show signs of wear or fraying, but the actual crash mitigation structures within the frame of the vehicle should easily last the life of the vehicle.

Any of these vehicles will offer nearly as much side impact resistance as that of the current generation Q7, and some will do so for substantially less money. The Q5, for example, has maintained the same design, which offers 23 cm of side impact protection, since 2009, which means you can find used models for substantially less than what you’d spend new. Similarly, the XC60, released in 2010, offers 22 cm of protection, which is still better than what you’ll find from the vast majority of cars, minivans, and SUVs on the road, new or used. The Ford Explorer’s design dates back to 2011, and is your best bet for finding side impact protection at this caliber with 3 row seating on a budget.

What about if I’m looking for side impact protection in cars or minivans? Can they be as safe as SUVs?

Yes! The best cars offer just as much side impact intrusion resistance as the best SUVs; car safety has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years. The good news is that you can also find excellent levels of safety with smaller cars too, which means you don’t have to spend lots of money or compromise on parking maneuverability or fuel economy in order to drive safely. Remember, in fact, that small cars can even be safer than large SUVs or pickup trucks in many cases.

It’s also important to remember that, if at all possible, the best way to avoid dying in a side impact collision is to avoid getting into one to begin with. That means not driving if you can (by using public transportation, walking, or cycling as alternatives), followed by driving as little as possible, followed by choosing the safest vehicles you can find.

I’ll keep working to spread the word about the importance of considering side impact protection when choosing a new or used vehicle for one’s family or loved ones. I hope to have more comparison lists out soon regarding 2016 cars, SUVs, and minivans.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

Why Should Everyone Drive Small Cars? It Makes Us All Safer!

Small cars are better for everyone, including the planet. Here's why.
Small cars are better for everyone, including the planet. Here’s why.

Driving small cars is one of those things that sometimes gets looked down on in the United States. Sure, poor college students, city dwellers, and tree huggers might be interested in compacts and sub-compacts, but everyone knows that if you’ve got the money for it, big vehicles are not only safer but a sign of your success in life, right?

Well, I won’t speak to the second point (that’s more of a topic for another kind of blog), but I can definitely speak to the first, and have multiple times in the past, such as when arguing for pedestrian safety, when informing parents about safe budget-friendly vehicles for teen drivers, or when describing how small cars can have lower death rates than large cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks.

Here are 4 reasons why every driver should drive a small car or SUV instead of a large car, pickup truck, or minivan unless necessary to do otherwise. If you need to transport more than 5 people at least once a month, for example, or if you actually use 5,000+ pounds of towing capacity on a monthly basis, you get a pass.

Small cars are safer for pedestrians, children, cyclists, and motorcyclists due to smaller mass and better visibility.

This is the most humanitarian reason to choose a small car over a large one, and it’s the argument I make the most often for this choice. To put it simply, no matter how many additional pounds we cram into vehicles under the auspices of safety, there are certain road users who will never be able to take advantage of them by definition: people who walk or wheel around.

Each of us is a pedestrian at some point in the day, unless we’re completely convalescent. Each of us either has a child, knows a child, knows someone with a child, or was once a child. Many of us are also currently, once were, or know cyclists and motorcyclists. And all of these people–all of us–deserve protection. We deserve to be able to use our streets and sidewalks and cities and towns without fearing death each time we step out of buildings and dare to use modes of transportation that don’t involve four wheels and steel cages.

Large cars, pickups, and SUVs are more likely to kill people outside of vehicles than small ones at any speed, simply because they have more mass, which means they transfer more energy into people. And there is a very limited amount of energy, relatively speaking, that a person can handle. Small vehicles give people a fighting chance, however small, of survival.

Besides the mass point, small vehicles also tend to have much better visibility than large vehicles, which makes them less likely to run over (forwards or backwards) pedestrians, children, cyclists, and motorcyclists. You rarely hear of people in Ford Fiestas backing over toddlers while reversing out of their driveways. You hear it much more frequently when it occurs with a large SUV or pickup truck, because it happens much more frequently in those (giant) kinds of vehicles.

Big cars / pickup trucks / SUVs are more likely to kill occupants in small vehicles in multiple-vehicle collisions while offering no advantage in single vehicle crashes.

This is one of the most readily-understood reasons to choose a small car over a large one; larger vehicles put smaller vehicles at risk. Unfortunately, many people draw the selfish instead of the selfless conclusion, and buy the largest vehicles possible in order to “improve their odds” in a crash.

It makes sense on the surface; if everyone else is driving big vehicles, you should buy one too to avoid being the odd man or woman out.

Unfortunately, the sense becomes senseless with a bit more thinking: if everyone else is driving big vehicles, then there aren’t any advantages to driving big ones too, unless you can find a bigger one.

In other words, you either have to join the insanity and in fact propagate it by buying ever-larger vehicles to stay ahead of the curve, or you have to put yourself at greater risk by driving a smaller vehicle, even though if more people followed your decision, the risks of driving a smaller vehicle would be eliminated.

The reason larger vehicles put smaller vehicles at risk in multiple vehicle collisions is…well, physics. Every body (e.g., a person, a bullet, or a vehicle) carries some amount of kinetic energy while in motion. The formula is .5 * mass * velocity * velocity. In a head-on collision between two vehicles of identical mass and speed, they deliver equal amounts of energy to each other. If one vehicle weighs significantly more than the other, however, such as when a 3,000 lb vehicle is hit by a 4,000 lb vehicle at the same speed, the heavier vehicle delivers significantly more energy to the lighter one while the lighter one delivers significantly less to the heavier one. In short, the occupant of the heavier vehicle puts the occupants of the smaller vehicle at greater risks of injury or death.

Many of us are okay with this. But we shouldn’t be. If not because we shouldn’t be okay with harming others, then because we can’t guarantee that we or our loved ones will always be in the bigger vehicle.

Beyond these points, large vehicles offer no advantages in single vehicle crashes. This is readily visible by the fact that around 50% of fatalities in vehicles of all sizes tend to be single vehicle crashes. Your mass doesn’t help you in a rollover or if you run into a tree or a telephone pole. It just makes you more likely to kill any pedestrians or occupants of smaller vehicles you run into.

Besides that, remember that some small cars have lower driver death rates than many much larger cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs.

Big cars / pickup trucks / SUVs offer no protection in collisions with large vehicles (e.g., semi-trailers, box trucks, school buses, regular buses, dump trucks, garbage trucks) or any vehicle requiring a CDL.

This is the least considered drawback to choosing a large car, SUV, or pickup truck, yet it’s closely tied to the previous reason to avoid them: big cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs aren’t going to keep you or your family safe if you’re hit by a truly large vehicle–the kind that requires a CDL, or commercial driver’s license. And there are a *lot* of those vehicles on our road.

You see them every day: semis, delivery trucks, school buses, normal buses, and garbage trucks are everywhere. And a vehicle that weighs 20,000; 40,000; or even 80,000 pounds is going to do exactly the same kind of life-ending damage to a 2,000; 4,000; or 8,000 lb vehicle. Your F-150 won’t protect you; nor will your duallie or your Tahoe or any other typical vehicle. Don’t even think about RVs; they don’t have to adhere to crash safety standards, so they offer no protection against vehicles that do (i.e., anything that requires a CDL).

So even if you don’t care about pedestrians or people in small cars, you might want to care about the fact that your big car is still a very, very small car compared to many of the truly large vehicles that roam our roads.

Small cars are better for the environment and better for your wallet.

This final set of reasons appeals to both individualist and collectivist mindsets. On the environmental side, small cars produce fewer emissions, which results in greater health across our country and less damage to the atmosphere. They also require less gasoline, which leads to less environmental destruction and hopefully fewer wars. They require less infrastructure to support them, which means fewer giant highways, pedestrian-killing high-speed city roads, and concrete desert parking lots.

On the personal end, small cars get better fuel economy, are easier to park, and are also cheaper to buy and maintain. And any of these reasons are worth considering.

Consider a smaller car for your next purchase, and encourage those you love to do the same. In the long run, it increases the safety and quality of our planet for everyone. And remember that small doesn’t have to mean unsafe.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

How Dangerous are Senior Drivers Compared to Teenagers?

More than 30,000 Americans die each year due to auto-related collisions. I started this blog to reduce this number, and am happy to have helped thousands of parents make safer car seat and vehicular choices for their children and families. This has become my life’s work.

Drilling down into the numbers, it becomes apparent, however, that some drivers are more dangerous than others.

How safe are seniors (65+) compared to teenagers?

Earlier I wrote about how the most dangerous drivers on the road, in terms of involvement in fatal collisions per mile traveled, weren’t seniors, as is commonly thought in the US, but actually 16 to 29-year-old male drivers in general, and 16 to 19-year-old male drivers in particular. This information is summarized again here through this IIHS chart:iihs - fatal passenger vehicle crash involvements, 2008
The chart is a good start, as at first glance, it clearly disproves the notion that senior drivers are our most dangerous on the road. In the United States, citizens are typically classified as seniors once turning 65, as this is when they become eligible for Medicare (and when they used to become fully eligible for Social Security, although this has age of eligibility has unfortunately been scaled up over the years).

unsplash -1442458370899-ae20e367c5d8The chart suggests the safest drivers, both male, and female, are those between 30 and 69, or more specifically, between 30 and 59 and between 60 and 69. The 60-69 group clearly involves a number of seniors, yet they still contribute to the group of the safest drivers.

The 70 and over crowd becomes somewhat less safe, but both male and female drivers 70 or older are still less likely to be involved in fatal collisions per mile traveled than men between 16 and 29 and women between 16 and 19. Overall, drivers as a whole 70 and older are safer than drivers as a whole between 16 and 29, primarily due to just how unsafe male drivers are between 16 and 29.

To put it simply, 16-19-year-old teenagers are more likely to be involved in fatal collisions per mile traveled than drivers over 65, regardless of gender. 

OK, so seniors 65 and over are safer overall than teenagers. But how safe are seniors 80 and over compared to teenagers?

With this question, the picture becomes a bit more complicated, as information involving large numbers of people tends to be. Let’s split the age cohorts a bit more, adding a category of drivers between 20 and 24, a category of drivers between 25 and 29, a category of drivers between 70 and 79, and a category of drivers 80 and older. Are seniors still going to be universally safer than the average male driver under 30 or the average female driver under 20?

Not quite. Let’s look at another chart of IIHS data that answers this question:iihs-detailed-fatal-passenger-vehicle-crash-involvements-2008

The chart offers more resolution than the other one. Seventy to 79-year-old drivers overall are still safer than 16 to 29-year-olds overall, but as a group, 80 and older drivers become the group most likely to be involved in fatal collisions per mile traveled.

Specifically, male drivers 80 and over are still less likely to be involved in fatal collisions per mile traveled than male 16 to 19-year-olds, who remain the most dangerous age and gender cohort, and almost identical to 20 to 24-year old male drivers. However, because of how safe female drivers are overall–even the 16 to 19-year-old female cohort–the 80 and older female cohort become the most dangerous female cohort, and the overall cohort of 80 and older drivers becomes the most dangerous group on the road.

To put it simply, 16 to 19-year-old teenagers are more likely to be involved in fatal collisions per mile traveled than drivers between 65 and 79, regardless of gender. However, drivers 80 and over are more likely to be involved in fatal collisions than teenagers between 16 and 19, even though drivers 80 and over are still safer than male drivers between 16 and 19 and almost identical to male drivers between 20 and 24.

The problem with this data, though, is that it’s still incomplete. Even though it provides a more detailed look at driver safety than the previous chart, there are still many unanswered questions. For example, where between 70 and 79 does the rate of fatal driver collision involvement show its steepest inflection, or change?

I can’t answer that question right now. But what’s clear from this analysis is that seniors don’t become more dangerous drivers than teenagers until they’re past 80, and even then, they’re still safer than teen males between 16 and 19, and just about as safe as male adults between 20 and 24. Teen males between 16 and 19 remain the most dangerous drivers on the road.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.