However, it can be significantly affected by driver demographics. For example, a sports car that happens to crash test well and have good handling and braking (as a sports car should) may have a poor driver death rate due to the driving habits of people who buy sports cars.
I agree. If you don;t drive like most of the other drivers who buy your car then the statistic is not as meaningful. But, I tend to lean to it more than tests like crashing cars into walls as they ignore the reality of handling entering into the equation in real life driving. As a comparison, you could test video cameras by dropping them into a bucket of water, drying them out, and seeing which ones still work. Interesting to know, but hardly the conditions most of us will encounter.
Driving cars head-on into walls is just slightly more valid. A better test would be to drive a car at a steady speed and then hit the brakes full at some pre-determined distance from a brick wall. For example, drive a car at 60mph, hit the brakes 160 feet from the brick wall. Watch the safety statistics swing wildly as some cars stop before the wall, and some plow right into it. I don't suspect larger, heavier cars would look as good in a test like this as they do in the current tests that ignore real life issues.
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