Deadly 350 Z

[philip]

In USA Today, they published the NHTSA results of the most deadly cars to drive. The Nissan 350 Z was 3rd. The statistics were from 2004 to 2006. It was listed in driver deaths per million miles.

The new Mustang was around 15th.

The Z car came in with about 180 deaths per million miles.

They only counted drivers, since a car always has at least one. They also only counted females between the age of 24 and 58.

They were attempting to avoid drivers who might get in more than their share of deadly accidents, for example: all men or young or old women drivers.

The survey was designed to try and show the relative survivablility of various cars in deadly accidents. It also was attempting to show the ability of some features such as stability control or accident avoidance to prevent death.

It showed that large cars and SUV's are safer than small cars as the best results were with these larger cars. They were in the 8 deaths per million miles with these top performing cars. The only exception was the Excursion which had a far worse performance than other cars of its size. This may be related to the high center of gravity and roll over deaths.

Apparently SUVs this time did much better than previously, because of stability control, wider stance and lower centers of gravity.

Small sporty cars were the worse with the Acura RX comming in second.

A small Chevy SUV was the number one deadlist car. Apparently the rollover problem coupled with it being small helped it to this position.

I wonder how the positions would have changed if men were counted.

The 350 Z has always seemed to be a larger sports car and slightly under powered to me. The Mazda RX8 did not make the list nor did any of the other cars we would care about except the Mustang.

A while back, I remember reading one time that the Mustang 5.0 was the leading cause of death of young men under 21.

Still I am surprised about the 350 Z.