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Comment by profitnot | Hacker News Reader

It's more than a belief... the statistics bear it out. "The lowest 2015 death rate by vehicle type is for very large SUVs: 13 deaths per million registered vehicles. The highest is for mini cars: 64 deaths per million registered vehicles." https://www.edmunds.com/car-safety/are-smaller-cars-as-safe-...

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That could just mean SUV drivers drive less, or a myriad of other things. PG posted on Twitter a while back a study that showed SUVs were _less_ safe (per mile driven? I think).

Would really have to be a myriad of other things if that’s supposed to explain a 5x difference without the obvious reason for it.

What's the reason? That's it's bigger? But what if bigger cars crash more often? So yes, it does have to be thought about with clarity.

This is a very simple matter of physics. Do you know what typically kills in a car crash? Extreme G-forces generated by near instantaneous deceleration. Big, heavy things have to expend more energy to decelerate, so they tend to do so at a relatively slower rate. Small things can be stopped very quickly. Therefore, someone in a big, heavy SUV is going to have much higher chances of survival than someone in a Mini.

You're completely ignoring higher center of gravity and rollovers.

But more importantly, "deaths per registered car" is meaningless to an individual make a purchase.

It means that F=ma - the bigger you are, the safer you are. The driver of a small 2 seater car is going to be worse off than a huge semi if they both collide.

What you're talking about is "which is safer in a collision", which is an entirely different question from "which car is safer per mile to drive?"

Ah, I found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/business/safety-gap-grows...

But the article was from 2003, unfortunately. Searching online I can't find statistics per mile driven, which is what you need to made the claims the replies to my posts are making.

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