Domestics are any vehicle from Ford Motor Company (Ford, Mercury, Merkur, Lincoln), General Motors (Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, GMC, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Geo, Saturn, Hummer), Chrysler (Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, Plymouth, Eagle), or AMC. These four companies (twenty marques) made up the entirety of the domestic vehicles tested in NHTSA's 35 mph frontal crash test during the 1979 to 2010 period; all were in operation for at least a portion of this period.
Imports are vehicles from non-US companies.
This post compares performance of domestic versus imported vehicles for each model year from 1979 to 2010 in NHTSA's 35 mph frontal crash test.
In my last post, I discovered that "safe" (relatively speaking) in 1979 usually meant "American", and the gap in safety between the average domestic and import was huge, as detailed in my last post. The popular notion of Japanese cars (which made up the vast majority of imports then) being "tin cans" was accurate at the time. After that first round of crash tests, the gap between domestics and imports dropped precipitously, with many imports proving they could be as safe as the best domestics by 1983. Nevertheless, through 1987 the average domestic still performed better than the average import. (The 1985 "win" for imports was due to a large number of domestic trucks, vans and SUVs tested that year. Since trucks, vans, and SUVs were subject to less stringent safety standards than cars until the early 1990s, this weighed down the results.)
In 1988, the imports finally caught up to the domestics. With the exception of one "fluke" year of 1991, after 1988 the difference in injury risk between the average domestic and import was 3% or less.
The first chart is the "combined" injury risk, taken by averaging the average injury risk for the driver and passenger together. For instance, the "average" 1979 domestic car's HIC and Chest G values (1,090 HIC, 51.7 Chest G driver; 1,192 HIC, 46.8 Chest G passenger) would give the driver a risk of 33% and the passenger a risk of 36%. Averaged together, this is 35%. The second chart is the raw data.
Imports are vehicles from non-US companies.
This post compares performance of domestic versus imported vehicles for each model year from 1979 to 2010 in NHTSA's 35 mph frontal crash test.
In my last post, I discovered that "safe" (relatively speaking) in 1979 usually meant "American", and the gap in safety between the average domestic and import was huge, as detailed in my last post. The popular notion of Japanese cars (which made up the vast majority of imports then) being "tin cans" was accurate at the time. After that first round of crash tests, the gap between domestics and imports dropped precipitously, with many imports proving they could be as safe as the best domestics by 1983. Nevertheless, through 1987 the average domestic still performed better than the average import. (The 1985 "win" for imports was due to a large number of domestic trucks, vans and SUVs tested that year. Since trucks, vans, and SUVs were subject to less stringent safety standards than cars until the early 1990s, this weighed down the results.)
In 1988, the imports finally caught up to the domestics. With the exception of one "fluke" year of 1991, after 1988 the difference in injury risk between the average domestic and import was 3% or less.
The first chart is the "combined" injury risk, taken by averaging the average injury risk for the driver and passenger together. For instance, the "average" 1979 domestic car's HIC and Chest G values (1,090 HIC, 51.7 Chest G driver; 1,192 HIC, 46.8 Chest G passenger) would give the driver a risk of 33% and the passenger a risk of 36%. Averaged together, this is 35%. The second chart is the raw data.
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