The Safest New and Used Cars of Our Time

There are hundreds of car models on the market, each offering differing safety features, legroom, prices, features, mpg, etc. Narrowing that list can be incredibly challenging, and time consuming – especially if you are open to buying new and used cars.

While the IIHS tries to compile a list of their recommended safest cars each year, they end up recommending about 150 cars. For anyone searching for a car, that number is overwhelming. On top of that, the IIHS doesn’t seem to take their own driver death rate into account when adding vehicles. Many have driver death rates that are above average.

Frustrated, I created a list of all the cars 2003 and newer that have both excelled in safety tests (cars that have a score of 55 or lower on informedforlife.org) and a driver fatality rate lower than the average of 28 people per 1 million cars sold (using data from informedforlife.org and iihs.org).

For the fatality rate, if the car had data for previous model years, I used that data – assuming that the car will only improve with time. For models that are new, newly redesigned, or if there wasn’t any recent data, I wrote “No Data.”

Hopefully this helps someone at least narrow their list a bit!

With new cars coming out each year, this post is going to be outdated right when it’s published. Hopefully, it will help used car buyers find cheap but safe cars in the future: Published 9/27/2015.