Used car safety record - Prius at top of list

I'd be a little dubious of their results. New Zealand has a low population with very many old(er) vehicles on its road and insurance is not compulsory. So how does one find out if someone crashes their car? Especially a 15 year old Mitsubishi out in the sticks (boonies?). I know most collisions here will go through insurance and thus a log kept, but in New Zealand I guess it will only be newer (and thus more likely to be insured) cars that get logged or the very serious accidents.

 

The data is related to serious injury or death.

The bigger problem IMO with these studies is that they do not normalize the driver. Even today the Prius driver demographic is different than at large, and this was even more true 5 and 10 years ago.

 

You mean we're all old, boring and safe?

 

Speak for yourself

I was just talking about the average.

 

Appears to me that the data includes Australia which would give a much larger data sample with relatively few very old cars.

 

anecdotally, from the accidents i've read about here, the prius and their owners come out in pretty good shape, wit owners mostly unscathed.

 

The cut & paste is from the link below. (not allowed to post yet)

The results of this research is especially useful for inexperienced drivers purchasing their first vehicles.

"rightcar.govt.nz/used-car-safety-ratings"


How the Used Car Safety Ratings are calculated
Records from over 5.5 million vehicles in police-reported road crashes in Australia and New Zealand between 1996 and 2011 were analysed by Monash University Accident Research Centre. The ratings were calculated using an internationally reviewed method and are influenced by the vehicle's mass, the structural design of the body, and the safety features fitted to the vehicle, such as airbags and types of seat belts.

Each of the driver protection ratings in the 2013 update has been recalculated based on the most recent crash data available so they are not comparable with the ratings published in previous years. Models of vehicles that cause lower injuries to other road users with which they collide, including other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, as well as providing excellent protection for their own driver, and are fitted with Electronic Stability Control (ESC) are awarded the "Safe Pick" label.
The score for each individual model can be compared against the ratings for all other vehicles.
The driver protection ratings are about the risk of death or serious injury to the driver of the vehicle in the event of a crash. The ratings are not about the risk of being involved in the crash in the first place, which is generally determined by a range of factors including driver behaviour, vehicle condition and the road environment.
Question: Won't certain kinds of vehicles score a good rating because of the types of people who drive them or where they are driven?
Answer: These factors were taken into account as much as possible when the data were analysed. The ratings were adjusted for factors such as driver gender and age, type of road user involved, speed limit at the crash location, number of vehicles involved, crash configuration, and year and location of crash. As far as possible the ratings are about the contribution of the vehicle to injury outcomes in a crash and not who was driving the vehicle or where it crashed.
Cheers

 

Thanks for the post elobster. As far as possible is not very far.

 

Better than nothing. I remember a study such as this for the time of badge engineering. A Chevy or Pontiac would have a worse rating than a Buick, and yet they were literally the same car.

 

Better than nothing, but not good enough for the conclusions we are trying to draw. To try and separate out the owner from the car we could look at accident data in the cars people drove before they bought the Prius, perhaps also corrected for age. It is a complicated problem perhaps never to be solved; the best for now is to be aware and not put more import in these car safety data than they deserve.

This is why I pay more attention to the standardized tests.

The Consumer Reports reliability surveys have many instances of badge bias and/or owner differences. The Toyota Corolla/GM Prizm was a great example.

 

Also, the thread title is misleading. The numbers were for small cars. Given that the Prius really isn't that small it isn't surprising to see a lower rate.