Defender safest car to be in

Perhaps I misread the statistic, but the Toyota Land Cruiser seems to have the lowest numbers.

Yezzzzzzzzzzz....... ;-)))

Kind Regards

Still not convinced by this, the figures in which the Defender does well are two-car accidents in which an injury occurred, from the way the Defender is built it seems fairy certain that it'll be involved in injury accidents proportionally more frequently than many other vehicles because it mashes the other vehicle and injures the occupants far more readily. So a far lower speed accident will result in an injury statistic than for most other non-freight vehicles, while the driver is relatively safe from harm because it's low speed and he/she is inside the battering ram, not in front of it.

The above is just an interpretation on the statistics of course, I don't have my own crash test suite ;-)

What might be interesting is the stats for driver injury in single-vehicle crashes with things like trees, I don't think a Defender would do so well in that due to the lack of crumple zones.

Fairly, not fairy! Doh..

This looks like a posher version of some stats that were around a while ago. It doesn't take into account things like the average use of vehicles - Defenders, on average, will be used at low speeds and off the road more than a typical car, so you would expect accidents involving them to be less serious *on average*. It doesn't mean that hitting a motorway bridge at 60 is going to be more survivable than if you were in a Fiesta - probably less so, in fact. The stats are interesting, but no-one should assume from this that a Defender "is better in an accident" than any other car.

There is also the simple physics. Someone in a Defender is probably going to suffer less damage than the occupants of a small car that it collides with, in the same way that a bowling ball will always win in a competition with a tennis ball. That's something we don't necessarily want to publicise to the anti-4x4 brigade.

Interesting reading, though.

I was looking at the bar charts on page 18. I think the middle of the bar represents the average. The mercedes seems to rate highest.

On or around Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:45:36 -0700, madhatchetman enlightened us thusly:

Unless of course it ends up under water :-(

I mistrust nearly all those sort of stats, they're almost all too specific.

The bar shows the variance and the vehicles are ordered left to right by the average so the Landy wins this bar chart :)

Actually the study does more than take into account usage patterns affecting accident severity - the risk calculation is designed to eliminate them entirely (page 23). And don't forget the analysis only involves multi-vehicle accidents, of which the off-road variey will be statistically insignificant. Also the Defender also has a sample set larger than the group average which makes the figures very trustworthy.

Statistically the Defender *is* extremely safe.

Failing an organisation purchasing a couple of Defenders to sacrifice at the altar of Euro NCAP we have to take the figures as definitive in the absence of any other non-anecdotal evidence.

Fair enough - you've read the small print, which I confess I didn't do. I suspect that what's working here is simple physics. In terms of vehicle design, Defenders are not very safe (crumple zones, air bags, driver-friendly interiors etc) compared with "normal" cars. What makes them safer for their occupants is their sheer mass and rigidity, which ensures that damage is done to the other (lesser) vehicle, and the deceleration forces on the occupants of the Defender (which is what kills and injures) is lower, and partially transferred to the other vehicle and its occupants. ISTR reading somewhere that in an collision with a 4x4, the occupants of the other vehicle are more likely to be KSI'd than in any other collision, which would fit with this view. I'm surprised the antis haven't made more of this.

At the moment, I am doing about 10% of my mileage in a normal car and 0% in a Land Rover (the S2a is on blocks), so I am perhaps a little more aware of the size and general presence of 4x4s than I used to be. The other 90% are on a bike, where it pretty well doesn't matter what you hit - even if it's a Nissan Micra, you're toast.

Interestingly I recently read a much quoted study from Monash University on the dangers of four wheel drives. While the conclusion that death and injury from rollover accidents is much more likely in four wheel drives than other cars, far less often quoted is the fact that the data shows that large four wheel drives are not only less likely to have occupants injured in accidents, as confirmed in this thread, but are under represented in all accidents, injuries, and deaths, even to occupants of other vehicles and to pedestrians. And this after all possible correction factors are applied.

The conclusion seems to be that the type of vehicle and its safety equipment are far less important than the driver, and that what is seen when looking at vehicle types is the type of driver attracted to that vehicle type rather than anything about the vehicle itself. It is worth noting that the same study shows that by far the most dangerous vehicle type by any measure is sports cars - which almost invariably have good occupant protection, above average handling, braking etc.

JD

It's also worth noting that the Monash study is directly contradicted by the UK accident figures, where "sports cars" (although the cars they regard as sports cars aren't what I'd call a sports car) do quite well. Also the insurance companies give very low quotes for Lotus Esprits, because apparently people don't crash them much, this despite the cost of repair being very high. I'm not sure what other sports cars are like to insure.

Early studies in Germany indicated that early adopters of 4WD sports cars (Audi Quattros etc) were statistically more likely to have higher speed/severe accidents than cars with more modest acceleration/braking/roadholding characteristics. This is risk compensation at its most obvious - which may go some way to explaining why drivers of old Lotuses take great care not to collide with immovable objects..:p

It's not just the old ones, it's the new ones too (or it was when you could buy them), perhaps it's down to the difference between the attitudes of the likely drivers, e.g. someone who buys a Subaru Impreza (which are expensive to insure) compared to someone who spends the money on an Esprit, one plainly likes cars while the other is a thug ;-)

I've just finished writing a vehicle insurance quoting application for "Sports and Exotic" cars. The rating tables it runs on are unbelievably cheap - comprehensive insurance for a £120,000 Ferrari (or whatever marque you like) is only about 4 times as much as the same sort of cover for a Disco 1.

Even more worthy of note is that, for every two studies, there seem to be at least four conclusions.

I drive a Discovery 2 and the average behaviour on the Motorway scares the hell out of me just as much as it used to when I drove an MG Midget.

Pete