But even those trends aren’t 100% reliable.

Crash tests are imperfect

Car safety is much more complex than it seems. Safety agencies do their best to simplify it with awards and star ratings. But, as much as we’d love to list the safest cars, all available data has flaws.

Crash tests, for instance, don’t resemble real-world crashes. A frontal crash test – when a safety lab slams a car into a barrier — simulates a car crashing into a car of similar size and weight. They don’t tell us how a subcompact SUV fares when a full-size truck slams into it.

Plus: The 2023 Kia Sorento Hybrid offers great fuel economy with plenty of safety features and lively performance

Side crash tests do tell us what happens when a truck slams into a vehicle’s doors. One prominent safety lab now uses a sled that resembles a pickup for its side crash tests. But they can’t vary the size and the height of it.

The conditions of a laboratory also can’t mimic that horrible intersection on your way to work where everyone misunderstands the turn lanes. And crash tests don’t have a car following too closely behind the car that crashes.

Real-world crash data can help plug some of the gaps. But it’s chaotic because crashes are as much about driver safety as car safety.

Also see: 7 must-have safety features for your next car

The insurance industry’s safety watchdog

America has two major safety agencies that crash test almost every car for sale. One is the federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA — the one that awards the stars). It was not involved in this study.

The other is a safety lab funded by a consortium of insurance companies. Your insurance company has a financial interest in making accidents rare and mild. So a group of insurance companies works together to operate the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), which conducts its own tests.

The IIHS also has access to data from most major insurers – a rich source from which to study real-world accidents. That’s the data fed into this study.

Related: How electric cars are creating new challenges in car safety

About these numbers

The IIHS this week has released rankings of cars based on how often their drivers die in accidents and how often the driver in a car they hit dies.

The agency says the numbers “are a useful companion to the Institute’s safety ratings, as they capture different aspects of risk.” But no one figure can precisely tell you which cars are safest.

The IIHS has published figures on how often drivers die in each model every three years since 1989. This year, for the first time, the agency also considered how often the driver of the other vehicle in an accident dies.

This year’s numbers apply to “fatalities that occurred from 2018 to 2021 for vehicles from the 2020 model year, as well as earlier models with the same designs and features.” In some cases, they include 2017 model year cars “if the vehicles have not been substantially redesigned over the intervening period.”

To control for the fact that some cars are more common than others, the Institute considered death rates by millions of registered vehicle years.

A few trends

IIHS researchers spot a few trends in the data.

“We typically find that smaller vehicles have high driver death rates because they don’t provide as much protection, especially in crashes with larger, heavier SUVs and pickups,” said IIHS President David Harkey.

For instance, drivers of the Mitsubishi Mirage
MSBHF,
+0.04%
 proved more likely to die in an accident than drivers of any other car. The Mirage is one of America’s least-expensive new cars. It’s tiny — a subcompact car available as a sedan or a hatchback. The 2020 version lacked advanced safety features like automatic emergency braking (though the Mirage on dealer lots today does have that technology).

But some heavy, powerful vehicles made the list of cars with the highest death rate, too. The IIHS notes, “Six of the 21 vehicles with the highest driver death rates for model year 2020 are variants of the Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger, and Ford
F,
-0.72%
Mustang.”

Muscle cars put a lot of power in drivers’ hands for comparatively little money. “The muscle cars on this list highlight that a vehicle’s image and how it is marketed can also contribute to crash risk,” Harkey says.

Luxury cars, meanwhile, tend to protect their occupants better. “The models that rank among the best and worst performers on both lists point to the unfortunate fact that vehicle cost remains a factor in road safety,” Harkey said.

See: The safest new cars of 2023

How to use the data

Overall, the agency says, America’s roads are growing more dangerous. In its 2017 study, the IIHS found an average of 36 deaths per million registered vehicle years. In 2020, the number rose to 38.

That comes despite high-tech safety features like automatic emergency braking growing more common.

So how do you protect yourself?

Size appears to be part of the answer. Subcompact cars, the IIHS says, “had the highest driver death rates, averaging 153 deaths per million registered vehicle years. Very large luxury cars had the lowest, averaging only four deaths.”

But size alone isn’t the answer. It might also benefit you to avoid pickup trucks unless you need one. Six of the 10 vehicles most likely to kill the other driver were trucks. Only one truck – the GMC Canyon Crew Cab – appears on the list of cars with the lowest driver death rate.

This may have to do with how pickups are built. The ladder frames of most modern pickups allow them to flex to keep a wheel in contact with the ground on rough terrain. But they don’t hold up as well in crashes as the unibody design of most SUVs.

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And, sadly, spending more can protect you. “Crash avoidance systems and other advanced safety features are most often standard equipment on luxury vehicles,” the IIHS notes.

You might like: These are the 9 best cars for families in 2023, according to U.S. News

Notably, the data found zero deaths in four vehicles. Only one – the Nissan Pathfinder
NSANY,
-0.69%
 – is available for under $40,000 today.

2017-2021 cars with the highest driver death rate

2017-2021 cars with the lowest driver death rate

2017-2021 cars with the highest other driver death rate

(*Vehicles most likely to be involved in fatal accidents in which the driver of the other vehicle died.)

2017-2021 cars with the lowest other driver death rate

KBB’s car review methodology.

This story originally ran on KBB.com.