Prius safety rating drops

My guess:

Injury - Small Cars without Side Air Bags suck. If they break the ratings down by model year, I lay odds that once the Side Air Bags became standard, there will be a large reduction in injuries from that time forward. I'm sure they don't break out Prius injury stats by SAB and non-SAB models, so you're seeing all the folks without.

Collision - That's a rating of loss in cost per incident. The Prius is expensive to repair, period. I'm surprised it's up to average.

VSC would help with both stats once it becomes standard.

 

Those number, of course, will include units with the safety features and units without. It would be interesting to know what percentage of Priuses on the road have VSC and side air bags, and what percentage don't. If you've got a base model Prius, you are significantly less safe than the chart shows; if yours has the safety features, you are more safe than the chart shows.

 

Of course, I don't put much stock in these reports. As other threads have proven in the past, there are far too many ways to make these numbers say anything you want - good or bad.

 

From some of the incidents I've seen reported here, I still would rather be in my Prius if I was in a crash!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(brandon @ Sep 18 2006, 11:12 AM) [snapback]321138[/snapback]</div>

These numbers are pretty cut and dried. It's the number of reports of events of various severities compared to the numbers on other vehicles.

There's nothing theoretical about them. It's the actual results of accidents, injuries and repairs.

All the IIHS does is aggregate the results from all of the insurance companies to provide a bigger pool to make them more statistically accurate.

 

It may be that very little has changed with the Prius numbers, but the base that these numbers are being compared to is increasing in overall safety.

 

I'm not saying they're theoretical numbers. I'm saying that the numbers don't say enough to provide appropriate context, so one person can say, "The Prius is a much less-safe vehicle," another can say "On average, the Prius is a safe vehicle," and yet both are statistically correct.

Much like the Nielsen ratings, where the data is what the data is, they can still be interpreted by stations to say every one of their shows is #1 in the ratings. It's all in how your read the numbers.

Tim has a point - just because the numbers changed doesn't mean the car became any more or less safe. For all we know, the primary factor influencing the numbers could be the person behind the wheel.

The number 1 problem with statistics like this isn't the numbers - its the people/press who try to find causality within them. The statistics simply say, "here's what happened." They don't say why they happened, and you can't establish a causal relationship by only looking at this set of numbers.

 

I find the numbers reassuring: the Prius remains a safe car, on par with average large luxury vehicles. That is quite a feat.

Increased repair cost relative to other cars can have a variety of reasons as Brandon says, and honestly just does not interest me very much. Compared to medical bills, let alone the driver's health, who cares ?

 

As others have suggested this is a conglomerate rating with both cars with and with out all the safety features. I have seen some really horrific pictures of Prii, in crashes where the passengers walked away and all had side air bags hanging. I wish that Toyota could have decided to put all the safety features on every Prius in North America ( OK everywhere). As a student in the ER I saw too much, did too much, hoped too long, and prayed over the top, not to want every possible safety feature in every car in the world. Cars are tough, and people are fragile. Every car that gives its all for its people inside and outside, in a gold star for the engineers who designed that car.

 

Aw, disappointing. I enjoy my Prius, but I knew going into it that the HCH is a safer car. I think Toyota dropped the ball somewhat on safety (according to the highway safety institute research that I read before I got the car). For ex., they could have had active head restraints, like Honda. They have the know-how to make the Prius a 5-star crash test car like the HCH, but didn't bother. These are objective ratings - they don't have anything at stake in promoting Honda above Toyota...

 

You can add my voice to those willing to pay more for a safer car.
I think that Toyota, while losing some customers with a higher price, would probably see a net gain in sales if the Prius had a top safety rating. A lot of people (myself included) have the perception that a small, lightweight car just isn't as safe as they would like.
Do you think we'll ever get the DDHPS?*

*Drunk driving a Hummer protection system

 

You have to admit though - for as much as the LCD screen in the Prius encourages the driver to think about MPG, you have to wonder how much it distracts them from the road. C'mon now - we all have to admit we take our eyes off the road to look down and to the right now and then, maybe some of us a little too much... .

A request for 2008 Prius of mine is the instant MPG sit on the dash, heads-up.