How The Size Of Your Wallet Protects You In A Car Crash

When a Cadillac Escalade and a Honda Civic collide head-on, you don’t need a degree in physics to understand that the Escalade is probably going to win. But new research finds the extent of the Escalade’s advantage isn’t just its physical size, but its more massive sticker price.

A new study by the University of Buffalo found a correlation between accidents in which personal injury claims are filed and the size and price of the vehicles involved. In other words, more people get hurt in small, cheap cars than big, expensive ones — and the money matters a lot.

“We found that vehicle type, curb weight and price are all significant predictors of personal injury cost,” said Dietrich Jehle, a professor of medicine and biomedical research at the University of Buffalo. “For every additional $10,000 you spend, injuries go down by almost 12 percent. We also found that for every 1,000-pound increase in weight, vehicles were 19 percent safer.”

The study draws its conclusions based on the frequency of medical claims in collisions involving 360 different 2010–2012 car and truck models, ranging from the Smart ForTwo microcar to heavy-duty 4x4 pickups. It paints a different picture of automobile safety than one might see by relying solely on government crash-test scores, which generally involve single collisions of cars with various barriers. In order to make the data as clean as possible, the study used data collected in states that had no-fault insurance policies and adjusted for driver age and other factors; it also excluded sports cars due to their lower daily use.

Photo: University of Buffalo

The UB study makes some valid, if obvious, points: When two or more vehicles collide, heavier vehicles tend to push lighter ones around. The increased change in velocity for the lighter car in turn increases the risk of injury for those inside. “Overall, size is very important, but 32 percent of the variability is weight,” said Jehle. “The other thing is recoil…When smaller cars hit a larger, moving vehicle, that change in velocity can force the smaller car to go into reverse, resulting in far more serious injuries to the driver and passenger.”