4Runner safety

I stumbled on an interesting factoid: the 4Runner has one of the lowest death rates of any vehicle. IIHS periodically calculates the number of driver deaths per million registered vehicles. There are adjustments in this calculation and I gather that various factors mean it can't be exact. But the results show an overall death rate of 13 for the 4Runner compared with 36 for all vehicles on average.

Within its category of midsize SUVs, only two vehicles had lower rates (11 and 12). Most were in the 20s and 30s, a couple were in the 40s and one hit 51. This was for the years 2015-2018.

Results for years 2012-2015 were similar.

I thought this was interesting because IIHS crash test data shows mixed results for the 4Runner (only a "Marginal" rating for the small overlap front crash test).

Of course, death rates will depend not just on the inherent crash worthiness of a vehicle but how it is driven. IIHS says they adjust the rates for age and gender, so presumably some of that variable is accounted for. But one would expect the average 4Runner owner to engage in less risky driving than, say, the average WRX driver of the same age and gender.

Still, these are positive findings that I thought y'all might find interesting.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model

 

Or it could be most of you (Not me) are older than dirt and drive that way. LOL.

 

A surprising but welcome bit of info. Thanks for sharing

 

But note that the IIHS adjusted the stats for age. So it’s more likely that we’re just, er, wusses careful?

 

I am surprised the 2wd's are much worse than the 4wd's.

 

I was curious about that trend, noting it with other SUVs on the list like the Honda Pilot and Santa Fe. But until you prompted me to take a second look I didn't even see the 2WD 4Runner on the list -- let alone that it was so much worse.

Would love to know why. Especially since the majority of 4Runners are running in 2WD by default in daily use. Maybe it's owners being overconfident in bad weather, just because they're driving a big SUV?

I've often wondered too about how much benefit AWD provides for stability and thus preventing accidents. I know the conventional wisdom is that AWD/4WD does nothing but help you accelerate, with no benefits for braking (obviously) or cornering, with tires being far more important. But it's always seemed to me that having torque to all four wheels, especially torque that can vary as needed, would aid in directional stability. At least in some circumstances.

 

The tests are relatively low speed, while death rates are real life. Besides from the obvious physical factors, vehicle weight, full frame etc, and design, a late model 5th gen has 8 air bags which few trucks have. At high speed, and in fatal collisions, you can’t have too many air bags.