I noticed that according to this large pickups are some of the most dangerous vehicles on the road(to the driver and passengers) .A 2006 Titan got a 137(for some reason a 2005 got a 101?). All the pickup extra risk is from rollover risk.If the rollover risk were average they would be safer than average.
I would guess that many rollovers are single vehicle accidents.If most of your driving is urban suburban interstate pickups are probably fairly safe(later models) because your wreck is going to be with another car on a good road with a wide ,flat shoulder.If you drive in rural areas with roads that have very little shoulder then the risk of rolling over is much higher...This is the typical pickup "death" accident-dropping off the shoulder and flipping it at 60 mph.These single vehicle accidents are almost completely under the drivers control. .Driving carefully will decrease a pickup drivers risk more than it will drop an small vehicle drivers risk.Charlie

 

I admire the intent this website has, and I recognize that it is very difficult to come up a single accurate index. BUT, he has a lot of problems with missing data. Missing data is handled by assigning the car some average value for cars in its class, so a vehicle that is much worse than average in some parameter (e.g. Chevy Blazers and rollover) will get a better score than it ought to. A car that is better than the average of its class will get a worse score than it ought to (e.g., I believe that the Insight would very rarely rollover). Weight class is a big factor in the Insight's poor score, and again, this is penalizing the Insight for the Yugo's dangers. Also, for 2006 there are a lot of cars missing.
There are also inadequacies in the source data he uses (crash tests, etc.). For example, Ford Pintos tended to have the front axle fall off; also their gas tanks had a tendency to explode. None of these problems would show up in any of his data.
I would prefer to start out looking at The Institute for Highway Safety's (iihs.org) report on "The Risk of Dying in One Vehicle vs another"
Unfortunately, they don't list most of the cars we would be interested in (Prius, Insight, etc) unless there is a non-hybrid version. You're about 5 times more likely to die in a Chevy Blazer than in a Honda Civic!!
--Walter
PS Handling is more a function of suspension design than weight; my 1962 Buick Skylark station wagon (2 bedroom + sunporch version) handled reasonably well if you had a wide road.
PPS Somebody in insightcentral.com has been running his insight in autocrosses.

 

Forgot the name of the organization, but if safety is your paramount concern a large sedan is your choice. It has size and a low rollover hazard. Some might say it's what retired folks drive and it favorably skews the ratings.

 

"Although the group isn't yet well known to consumers or industry insiders..."

There is probably a reason for this.

If the Volvo were the vehicle of choice for Crack Dealers it would fare differently in the stats too. Statistics are funny little things. Before I bought my Insight I drove a Blazer. I felt more at risk in it than I ever have in my Insight. Every car is out-classed by something on the road. You control your fate. Drive safely and you will more than compensate for the weight/size differential.

 

It's not line anyone buys an Insight for that well-armored feeling of Road King invulnerability. Someone who buys this kind of car is already aware of the strengths and weakness A-Class vehicles. Funny, you never heard about the Pontiac Fiero being called a "dangerous" car, although it was even more of a death-box than the Insight, but nobody noticed because the Fiero was a sports car and the Insight was a greenie car.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to point out an Insight fatality at http://www.nhtsa.gov/ (they record all auto deaths by make - don't know about the neutrality or funding of www.informedforlife.org )

Bottom line is the accident record on the roads - more than two Insight fatalities would be above average.

Strange nobody has provided a link of such.

 

One of the main reasons they don't sell the Insight anymore is that they couldn't keep up with the safety regs. I'm not surprised it does poorly in safety assessment against newer cars -- the design is from the 90s and things have changed a lot since then.

A small car isn't necessarily unsafe -- witness the high safety rating of the Acura TSX from the original post and, conversely, the poor performance of the enormous Tundra -- but a *very* small, lightweight car with a ten-year-old design is bound to come up short.

Ryan

 

Honda could have easily upgraded the Insight if they wanted to, but it was a halo car - a statement of the ultimate fuel mizer.

While they did not expect a lot of sales, it was less than Honda expected. Finally, there was a requirement for side airbags and Honda did not want to bother.

I have seen several crash pictures with front and back totally anniliated, but the driver has minor injuries at most.

msantos might shed some light on this...

 

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a new "high-efficiency statement car" from Honda before too long, with all the new regulated safety features plus a new whiz-bang powertrain. Perhaps a diesel-electric hybrid, or a plug-in hybrid, or who knows what.

Vtec.net's model matrix has a new "family" hybrid penciled in for 2009, which sounds about right.

Ryan