Car Finance Expert, Graham Hill, Explains Why Size Matters In An Accident

Saturday, 17. April 2010

According to Auto Express size matters, something, of course, that I have always subscribed to! Ooer missus, stop that tittering in the back, I’m talking about car safety – obviously. It seems that the bigger the car the less likely you are to be injured. Mind blowing as that might be, equally mind blowing is the most dangerous car is one of the smallest, the Rover Mini (not to be confused with the BMW Mini). The figures were released by the Department for Transport for car accidents that took place between 2000 and 2004. If you have an accident in a Rover Mini you have an 84% chance of being injured and yet in a Land Rover Defender (the sort of 4WD you see trundling around farms) you only have a 33% chance of injury. Whilst some of the cars on the list are no longer made they certainly give a flavour of what to drive in order to be safe and what to avoid. During the study they also looked into serious and fatal injuries and again the Rover Mini came off worst with a 14% risk. I’ve listed the top 10 and bottom 10 below but clearly if you want to be safe whilst driving you should be driving a 4WD:

Safest Cars	Chance Of Injury	Lease Safe Cars	Chance Of Injury
Land Rover Defender	33%	Rover Mini	84%
Mercedes M Class	34%	Hyundai Atoz	84%
Toyota Land Cruiser	38%	Fiat Seicento	81%
Isuzu Trooper	40%	Fiat Cinquecento	81%
Jeep Grand Cherokee	41%	Daewoo Matiz	81%
Land Rover Discovery	42%	Citroen AX	80%
Range Rover	43%	Suzuki Swift	80%
Mitsubishi Shogun	46%	Nissan Micra	79%
Vauxhall Frontera	49%	Peugeot 106	79%
Jaguar S Type	49%	Vauxhall Nova	78%