6 Cars with Death Rate of Zero in New IIHS StudyAudi"I just want a safe car."How many times have you heard that when your non-car-guy friends ask you for advice? A new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has just named six vehicles with zero deaths in the period studied.IIHS used a stat it calls "deaths per million registered vehicle years" to come up with the lists.The Chevrolet Tahoe did well in the study, as did the Audi Q7 (top).ChevroletYou can define a registration year as "one vehicle registered for one year." So, a single Kia Rio registered for three years would be three registration years. Or you could probably say "deaths per million vehicles per year" instead, if that seems clearer.AdvertisementAdvertisementHere are the six vehicles IIHS found that had zero deaths:Audi Q7 AWDBMW X7 4WDChevrolet Tahoe 4WDMercedes-Benz GLB-Class 4WDMercedes-Benz GLE-Class 2WDToyota Tundra CrewMax 4WDAn elite list. You'll notice that five of the six are SUVs, and the sixth is a big truck. That's no coincidence. All other things being equal, large vehicles are safer in collisions."Size and power matter, as do vehicle crashworthiness and effective crash avoidance systems," IIHS president David Harkey said in a statement.An object in motion tends to stay in motion—until it hits something. From a pure physics standpoint, in a collision, you want to be in the heavier object, because it has more inertia, thus an incentive to get a big SUV. If you're going to drive through a brick wall, it's best to be in a tank instead of a Kia Rio. Doing worse in the study were smaller cars, led by the Rio, which was associated with 170 deaths per million registered vehicle years.The Corvette was among smaller, more powerful cars that fared poorly.ChevroletMore than half of the 2023 models with the highest driver death rates are small cars, sports cars, or muscle cars, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says.AdvertisementAdvertisementFor instance, the Chevy Camaro had 88 deaths, while the Corvette had 82."Even the safest small cars don't fare well in crashes with large pickups and heavy SUVs," Harkey said. "Powerful engines and marketing that attracts aggressive drivers is the issue for sports cars and muscle cars. They're dangerous mainly because of how they're driven."The Kia Rio is a small car.KiaHere are the worst cars in the study, with deaths per million registered vehicle years:Kia Rio, 170Nissan Versa, 164Chrysler 300 2WD, 132Dodge Charger Hemi 2WD, 127Dodge Challenger 2WD, 125Kia Forte, 120Ram trucks featured in the study.RamAs far as vehicles that cause the most deaths in other cars (i.e., cars you hit), Stellantis takes the biggest hit, so to speak. The highest rates of other-driver deaths per million registered vehicle years, 2023 and equivalent earlier models, 2021–24, were:AdvertisementAdvertisementRam 3500 crew cab long bed 4WD, 204Dodge Charger Hemi 2WD, 161Dodge Charger 2WD, 136Chevrolet Silverado 3500 crew cab 4WD, 126Ram 1500 Classic crew cab short bed 4WD, 124Ram 2500 crew cab short bed 4WD, 113Ram 1500 Quad 2WD, 113Chevrolet Silverado 2500 crew cab 4WD, 111Ram 2500 crew cab long bed 4WD, 102Cadillac XT5 2WD, 100You can't just look at these stats and say one vehicle is always safer than another. There are many variables not taken into account when presenting these figures."They don't only reflect the properties of the vehicles themselves," according to IIHS. "The crash database includes driver age and gender, allowing analysts to adjust the rates to account for the facts that men are involved in more crashes than women and older drivers are more likely to be killed in a given crash than young ones, for example. They are not adjusted for other factors that might influence fatality rates, such as the speeds people drive and the number of miles they travel per day."Also, luxury models can be equipped with more cutting-edge safety features than some less-expensive cars. There are more:AdvertisementAdvertisement"It is possible, for example, that even when the data are adjusted for age, a greater proportion of new or inexperienced drivers choose cheaper vehicles. Those working double shifts or multiple jobs may also log more miles per day than more affluent drivers."And drivers operating under the influence are also not separated out. But, like the billboards say, size matters, all other things being equal.You can see the whole study here. Now go forth and drive safely.