Chevy Blazer ranked deadliest vehicle in U.S.

[Globalist]

Chevy Blazer ranked deadliest vehicle in U.S.



Reuters / March 15, 2005

DETROIT -- The two-door Chevrolet Blazer from General Motors has the highest driver death rate of any passenger vehicle on U.S. roadways, a research group with links to the insurance industry said Tuesday.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety based that conclusion, and its embarrassing result for GM, on an extensive study of passenger vehicles from the 1999-2002 model years.

The study focused on the rate of driver deaths in various types of crashes, including both single- and multiple-vehicle accidents.

The overall driver death rate, for 199 models studied during the 2000-2003 calendar years, was 87 per million registered vehicles annually, the Insurance Institute said.

Weighing in at more than three times the overall rate, the Insurance Institute said the two-door, two-wheel-drive Blazer -- a mid-sized SUV -- had an average of 308 driver deaths per million.

The Blazer also had the highest rate of driver deaths in rollover accidents at 251 per million.

Highlighting a long-standing trend, the Insurance Institute said "large cars and minivans dominate among vehicle models with very low death rates." Models with the highest rates are "mostly small cars and small and mid-sized SUVs," it said

Bucking the trend, however, the Insurance Institute said the small-sized Toyota RAV4 SUV from Toyota Motor Corp. ranked among vehicles with the lowest average driver death rate.

Vehicles with the lowest overall rate of driver deaths were led by the large Mercedes E-Class luxury sedan from DaimlerChrysler AG, at 10 per million, according to the Insurance Institute.

That was followed by the Toyota 4Runner mid-sized SUV, with an overall driver death rate of 12, the four-door mid-sized Passat from Volkswagen, with 16 deaths, Toyota's Lexus RX 300 mid-sized SUV, at 17, and RAV4 with 18.

In addition to the Blazer, vehicles with the highest driver death rates were led by the Mitsubishi Mirage, a two-door, small-sized car from Mitsubishi Motors Corp., at 209; GM's Pontiac Firebird sports car at 205; the subcompact Kia Rio from Kia Motors Corp. at 200; and the two-wheel-drive Kia Sportage compact SUV at 197.

GM has already halted full-scale production of the two-door Blazer and the vehicle, one of the oldest in the company's lineup, is due to be phased out next month.

Without commenting specifically on the SUV, a company spokesman defended GM's safety record and questioned the usefulness of the Insurance Institute's study.

"GM designs crashworthiness and crash avoidance attributes into all of our vehicles and conducts a battery of tests that replicate an array of potential real-world crashes as part of our commitment to safety before, during and after a crash," GM spokesman Alan Adler said in a statement.

"It is impossible looking at these statistics to know what role driver behavior, such as drunk driving and driving without a safety belt, played in these deaths. We know from decades of work that whether a driver dies in a crash has more to do with behavior than with the vehicle."

[Globalist]

Very strange!

[Proetus]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/15/Autos/fatality_results/

...most fatalities in SUVs were single vehicle or roll-over accidents.
...
He also said older designs were one reason why nine of the 14 vehicles with the highest death rate were American while only three on the list of lowest fatalities were from the Big Three.

Combine a short wheelbase with high ground clearance and a leaf spring suspension and it's not too suprising that the 2-door blazer and explorer are among the deadliest, mostly from single vehicle rollovers.

[johnd89]

it looks weird that the 'bird sits between the mirage and the rio!!

joke aside, how come beeing exactly the same with the camaro, but beeing sold in lower #'s manages to have more deaths than it(camaro)?
that makes no sense, this statistic is crap.

[pupp1]

WOW I guess there were a lot of stupid blazer owners.Most of them must have been fairly new drivers.I still like the Blazers.And yes, it does seem so strang that the Firebird is deemed worse than the Camaro.

[RWD60]

the FB is deadlier (i'd bet) b/c the pontiac owners are younger and more, shall we say... adventurous.

[johnd89]

Originally Posted by RWD60

the FB is deadlier (i'd bet) b/c the pontiac owners are younger and more, shall we say... adventurous.

well, I wouldn't bet the rustang was any safer than the f-b(with the exception of the side impact maybe...), but you know what they say: "speed kills: buy a rustang, live forever!!"

on a more serious note, probably the camaro had younger buyers because it was a little cheaper.

[paul8488]

Originally Posted by pupp1

WOW I guess there were a lot of stupid blazer owners.Most of them must have been fairly new drivers.I still like the Blazers.And yes, it does seem so strang that the Firebird is deemed worse than the Camaro.

Yeah, does seem a bit odd... but they're not really 'deeming' anything... it appears that they just crunched the numbers. I think RWD60 might be right... this'll have as much to do with the drivers (that put themselves in an accident in some cases) as the cars. It's another statistic that's hard to really put a value on. Some people might think "Hey, I'll buy a Camaro and be safer than a Firebird driver", though I'll bet that in an exact same accident the 'Bird will behave the exact same as the Camaro. If all these vehicles had been driven at the same speed and through the same curves and hit the same vehicles at the same angles, I'd be more worried about the Blazer. Could it be that every 2-door Blazer driver is some hooligan that drives like a fool? Maybe not, but this is just another measure that has to be taken with a little thought.

[johnd89]

Originally Posted by paul8488

Yeah, does seem a bit odd... but they're not really 'deeming' anything... it appears that they just crunched the numbers. I think RWD60 might be right... this'll have as much to do with the drivers (that put themselves in an accident in some cases) as the cars. It's another statistic that's hard to really put a value on. Some people might think "Hey, I'll buy a Camaro and be safer than a Firebird driver", though I'll bet that in an exact same accident the 'Bird will behave the exact same as the Camaro. If all these vehicles had been driven at the same speed and through the same curves and hit the same vehicles at the same angles, I'd be more worried about the Blazer. Could it be that every 2-door Blazer driver is some hooligan that drives like a fool? Maybe not, but this is just another measure that has to be taken with a little thought.

yeah, the poor f-bods were t-boned by redneck driven blazers: mistery solved!

[driverblogger]

many Chevy's there, I wonder...

[gmsickofan]

I can tell you that the crazies that drive Camaros, Firebirds and Blazers at high speeds in the back woods in rural parts of Texas without street lights are just asking for trouble.

[Proetus]

Originally Posted by johnd89

joke aside, how come beeing exactly the same with the camaro, but beeing sold in lower #'s manages to have more deaths than it(camaro)?
that makes no sense, this statistic is crap.

"Deaths per million vehicles". It is the death rate, not the total number of deaths.

[gmsickofan]

Originally Posted by driverblogger

many Chevy's there, I wonder...

Well 2 are the same vehicle, basically, and one is a Suzuki. And we know why people are dying in Camaros - it isn't because they drive conservatively.

[driverblogger]

Originally Posted by gmsickofan

Well 2 are the same vehicle, basically, and one is a Suzuki. And we know why people are dying in Camaros - it isn't because they drive conservatively.

okay, i see it now. then why isn't the vitara there? or the firebird?

[327]

Originally Posted by driverblogger

many Chevy's there, I wonder...

This isnt correct anymore, they were 99-02 models results taken during 2000-2003