There’s a clear ceiling to the notion that bigger is safer, new research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.
For vehicles that weigh less than the fleet average, the risk that occupants will be killed in a crash decreases substantially for every 500 pounds of additional weight. But those benefits top out quickly. For vehicles that weigh more than the fleet average, there’s hardly any decrease in risk for occupants associated with additional poundage.
“For American drivers, the conventional wisdom is that if bigger is safer, even bigger must be safer still,” IIHS President David Harkey said. “These results show that isn’t true today. Not for people in other cars. And — this is important — not for the occupants of the large vehicles themselves.”
