In a study of the relationship between Insurance Institute for Highway Safety frontal offset crash test ratings and real-world fatality rates, there was a clear trend for better-rated vehicles to have lower driver fatality risk, although the correlation was not uniform across all vehicle groups or statistically significant in all cases. In head-on crashes of similar vehicles rated good and poor, the estimated odds of driver fatality was approximately 74 percent lower for the good vehicle than for the poor vehicle, with confidence limits ranging from 28 to 91 percent. For all two-vehicle crashes of rated vehicles, the odds of driver fatality was 34 percent lower for the good vehicle than for the poor vehicle, but this estimate was not statistically significant. When a rated vehicle collided with a nonrated vehicle, the fatality risk for the rated vehicle driver was highest for poorly rated vehicles, then progressively smaller for vehicles with marginal, acceptable, or good ratings. Fatality rates per registered vehicle were less consistent but generally lower for good vehicles than for poor vehicles. Cars and minivans with good ratings had significantly lower real-world driver fatality rates in frontal crashes than cars and minivans with poor ratings: 23 percent lower for cars, 39 percent for minivans. Midsize sport utility vehicles with good ratings had fatality rates 60 percent lower than those rated poor. (Author/publisher)
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