How the score works
The score is the share of all ranked vehicles that this one beats on driver safety. A score of 90 means its drivers died less often than drivers of 90% of vehicles, whatever their class.
Real deaths, not crash tests
The data is the IIHS driver death rate: driver deaths per million registered vehicle years, counted from the federal fatal-crash database. IIHS adjusts it for driver age and gender, so a model isn't penalized just because young drivers prefer it. Because it measures what actually happened on the road, it can be compared across sizes and classes.
One entry per model
IIHS reports two- and four-wheel-drive versions separately. Where both have data, they're combined into one entry, with the version that has more data counting for more. Hover over a combined entry to see each version's own rate.
Not enough data, not shown
Some models have so few vehicles on the road that their death rate could be almost anything. A vehicle is ranked only if its 95% confidence range is within ±75% of its rate. For low-rate vehicles, the range is compared with the all-vehicle average instead, so a near-zero rate doesn't make the test impossible to pass. Vehicles that fail are left out entirely rather than shown with a misleading score.
Adjusted for luck
Some models have few registrations, so a handful of deaths swings their rate a lot. A model with zero deaths may just have been lucky. Before ranking, each rate is pulled toward the all-vehicle average in proportion to how uncertain it is. Models with lots of data barely move. The label under each score shows how precisely the rate is known.
What it doesn't cover
Only driver deaths count, not passengers or injuries. Rates reflect how a model is driven as well as how it's built. Sports cars score poorly partly because of how people drive them. Only vehicles with enough data appear, and the newest data covers 2020–2023 models, so recently redesigned vehicles may differ. This ranking is about the people inside. Heavy vehicles that protect their own drivers well can be more dangerous to everyone else on the road.