Many think you can spot a dangerous driver by the car they drive. Is this true?
A recent report suggests it is true, to some degree. If you imagined that those driving sports cars are the most likely to crash, you would be correct. Insurify’s 2021 study of crash data found that the top five vehicles in terms of percentage of drivers who had caused a crash in the last seven years were all sports cars:
- Scion F-RS
- Kia Stinger
- Subaru WRX
- Hyundai Genesis Coupe
- Infiniti Q60
Their average is between 15% and 16% for these cars, while the average is just under 11% across all models. In other words, anyone driving a sports car is almost one and half times more likely to cause a crash.
What might explain this?
Surely a car cannot make a driver drive badly? It cannot, but it can make it more tempting. For example, if you know your car can leave everyone standing at the lights, you are more likely to race off if someone revs their engine in a challenge than if you know your car will lose.
While you can drive a sports car at a crawl, if you bought it, the chances are you like speed. You can also cross the speed limit easier, whether intentionally or by mistake, than in a loaded family saloon.
Another factor is that sports cars can be hard to handle and easier to lose control of than something more sluggish.
Perhaps the only positive is that these smaller cars will likely do you less harm in a collision than larger cars. However, you could still suffer serious injuries that require understanding how to claim compensation.