Every few years, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety releases one of the most revealing looks available at how different vehicles actually perform in real-world crashes, rather than in a controlled laboratory setting. The latest report, released in July 2026 and covering model year 2023 vehicles, confirms a pattern that has held remarkably steady for decades: small cars and high-powered performance models tend to be the most dangerous for their own drivers, while midsize and large SUVs, particularly luxury models, tend to offer the strongest protection.
How the Study Actually Works
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has calculated driver death rates approximately every three years since 1989, using real-world fatality data pulled from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, paired with vehicle registration figures. The latest rates reflect fatalities that occurred between 2021 and 2024 involving 2023 model-year vehicles, along with earlier models that share the same basic design and features, since including those equivalent older vehicles increases the sample size and makes the results more statistically reliable. The rates are adjusted for driver age and gender, since men are involved in more crashes than women and older drivers tend to face a higher fatality risk in a given crash than younger ones, but the figures are not adjusted for other behavioral factors, such as how fast people drive or how many miles they log each year.
This year’s report also marks only the second time the organization has calculated what it calls the other-driver death rate, meaning the number of people killed in other vehicles during crashes involving each specific model. Looking at both figures together paints a more complete picture, since a vehicle can be relatively safe for its own driver while still posing a significant risk to the people it collides with.
The Vehicles With the Highest Driver Death Rates
Small cars, sports cars, and muscle cars dominate the list of vehicles with the worst outcomes for their own drivers. The Kia Rio topped the list with a driver death rate of 170 per million registered vehicle years, followed closely by the Nissan Versa at 164. Several large, powerful sedans also ranked poorly, including the Chrysler 300 and both two-wheel-drive versions of the Dodge Charger, along with the Dodge Challenger. Small cars such as the Kia Forte, Nissan Sentra, and Subaru Impreza appeared throughout the list as well, alongside performance-oriented models such as the Chevrolet Camaro and Chevrolet Corvette. For context, the average driver death rate across all makes and models included in the study was 37 deaths per million registered vehicle years, meaning every vehicle on the highest-risk list posted a rate more than double, and in several cases more than four times, that overall average.
The Vehicles With the Lowest Driver Death Rates
At the opposite end of the spectrum, six vehicles recorded a driver death rate of exactly zero during the study period, including the Audi Q7, the BMW X7, the Chevrolet Tahoe, the Mercedes-Benz GLB-Class, the Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class, and the Toyota Tundra CrewMax. Eighteen of the twenty vehicles with the lowest overall driver death rates were SUVs, spanning small, midsize, large, and very large size categories, reinforcing just how strongly vehicle size and weight continue to correlate with driver survival in real-world crashes. Rounding out the safest group were models such as the BMW X5, the Volkswagen Atlas, the Volvo XC60, and the Volvo XC90, most of which posted rates in the single digits.
Which Vehicles Pose the Greatest Risk to Others
The other-driver death rate tells a notably different story than the driver death rate, and size once again plays a defining role, just in the opposite direction. Ten of the twenty vehicles with the highest other-driver death rates were large or very large pickup trucks, including several heavy-duty variants equipped with especially powerful engines. The Ram 3500 crew cab took the top spot by a wide margin, with an other-driver death rate of 204 per million registered vehicle years, well above the Ram’s already elevated peers such as the Chevrolet Silverado 2500 and 3500 and the GMC Sierra 2500. Interestingly, a handful of vehicles appeared on both the highest driver death rate list and the highest other-driver death rate list, including the Chevrolet Camaro, the Chevrolet Malibu, and both two-wheel-drive versions of the Dodge Charger, suggesting that certain models pose an elevated risk across the board rather than simply trading danger to one party for safety of another.
Which Vehicles Are Safest for Everyone Involved
A small group of vehicles ranked among the safest for both their own drivers and the drivers of other vehicles they might collide with, a genuinely impressive combination given how rarely those two categories overlap. All but one of these six standout models were luxury SUVs, including the BMW X5, the BMW X7, the Porsche Cayenne, the Volkswagen Atlas, the Volvo XC60, and the Volvo XC90. According to IIHS President David Harkey, this combination reflects both strong crashworthiness and effective crash-avoidance technology working together, though he was careful to note that a substantial part of overall safety still comes down to how responsibly a vehicle is driven in the first place.
Why Vehicle Type Matters So Much
When the results are broken down by overall vehicle size and class rather than individual models, the pattern becomes even clearer. Minicars posted a driver death rate of 158, more than four times the overall average, while very large luxury cars posted a driver death rate of just seven. Pickup trucks tell a more complicated story, since small and large pickups posted relatively modest driver death rates, but very large pickups posted the highest other-driver death rate of any category at 110, underscoring just how much danger their size and weight can pose to occupants of smaller vehicles in a collision.
Why Some Vehicles Perform So Differently
IIHS researchers caution that driver death rates should not be interpreted purely as a measure of how well a specific vehicle protects its occupants in a crash, since the figures also reflect real-world differences in who tends to drive certain vehicles and how those vehicles tend to be driven. Harkey noted that powerful engines and marketing that attracts aggressive drivers largely explain why sports cars and muscle cars perform poorly, since these vehicles are dangerous mainly because of how they are driven rather than any inherent flaw in their construction. Similarly, cheaper vehicles may be more likely to be driven by newer or less experienced drivers, or by people working long hours or multiple jobs who log more miles per day, both of which can influence fatality rates independent of the vehicle itself.
How This Differs From Standard Crash Test Ratings
Driver death rates serve as a useful companion to the Institute’s traditional crash test ratings, but the two measure fundamentally different things. In a standard front crash test, a vehicle is propelled into a stationary barrier at forty miles per hour, meaning the kinetic energy involved depends entirely on that individual vehicle’s own weight, which makes those ratings useful for comparing vehicles within the same size category but not for comparing a small car against a large SUV. Real-world driver death rates, by contrast, can be compared meaningfully across vehicle classes, since they reflect what actually happens when vehicles of different sizes share the same roads.
Final Thoughts
The latest IIHS driver death rate report reinforces a pattern that has persisted across nearly every version of this study since 1989, larger vehicles, particularly midsize and large SUVs, continue to offer meaningfully better protection for their own drivers, while small cars and high-powered performance vehicles continue to post some of the worst outcomes. At the same time, the newer other-driver death rate data adds an important layer of nuance, showing that some of the largest and most powerful vehicles on the road, particularly heavy-duty pickup trucks, pose a significant risk to the people in the vehicles around them, even as they protect their own occupants effectively. For anyone shopping for a new vehicle with safety as a top priority, this report offers a valuable reminder that a vehicle’s real-world performance depends not only on its size and engineering, but on the driving habits of the people behind the wheel.
