The Economist examines car weight and fatalities in car crashes. In two-vehicle collisions, while heavier cars tend to mean fewer deaths for those driving them, the opposite is true for the other car involved.
The heaviest 1% of vehicles in our dataset—those weighing around 6,800lb—suffer 4.1 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, on average, compared with around 6.6 for cars in the middle of our sample weighing 3,500lb, and 15.8 for the lightest 1% of vehicles weighing just 2,300lb. But heavy cars are also far more dangerous to other drivers. The heaviest vehicles in our data were responsible for 37 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, on average, compared with 5.7 for median-weight cars and 2.6 for the lightest cars.
