[OC] Bei tödlichen Unfällen waren die Fahrer welcher Automarke nicht angeschnallt? (NHTSA FARS, 2020–2023)
Von informed-for-life
[OC] Bei tödlichen Unfällen waren die Fahrer welcher Automarke nicht angeschnallt? (NHTSA FARS, 2020–2023)
Von informed-for-life
27 Kommentare
I analyzed 152,911 fatal vehicle crashes in the United States from 2020–2023 using NHTSA’s [Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)](https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars).
**What this shows:** For each car brand, the percentage of *drivers involved in fatal crashes* who were not wearing a seatbelt. This is NOT general seatbelt usage — it’s seatbelt usage specifically among drivers in crashes where someone died.
**Why it matters:** Not wearing a seatbelt dramatically increases the odds that a crash becomes fatal. So this chart gives us a proxy for driver risk profile.
**Key finding – The „Used Car“ Demographic Effect (Image 1):** If you look at the first chart (all vehicles), **Honda is by far the highest at 38.5%**. But when I filtered the data to only include newer vehicles (Model Year 2020 or newer — see the second image below), **Honda plummets to 16.6%** (which is perfectly average).
This proves that the massive non-use rate isn’t inherent to Honda drivers in general, but rather that older, cheaper used Civics and Accords disproportionately end up in the hands of much younger demographics, who statistically have much lower seatbelt use rates.
When you look only at 2020+ models:
https://preview.redd.it/0fumogyzgc1h1.png?width=2404&format=png&auto=webp&s=9801256462941bf437e9d4c433a27add4a84d96e
* **Dodge (26.1%)** becomes the highest risk group (likely driven by Chargers/Challengers)
* **Lexus (3.5%)** and **Tesla (7.0%)** remain exceptionally safe at the bottom. Tesla’s low rate is likely a combination of an aggressive seatbelt warning system that you can’t easily ignore, and a generally safety-conscious demographic.
**Methodology:**
* Data: NHTSA FARS National CSV files, 2020–2023 final releases
* Vehicle identification: VPICMAKENAME field (Note: Medium/Heavy commercial trucks like Isuzu were excluded from the 2020+ chart)
* Seatbelt: REST_USE field, „Not Used“ or „None Used“ classifications
* Only drivers (PER_TYP = driver), excludes motorcycles.
* Tool: Python (pandas) + matplotlib
**Full interactive version with more charts:** [informedforlife.com/fars-data](https://www.informedforlife.com/fars-data.html)
Honda odd one out for sure
Ram I find very hard to believe (possibly seatbeltless crashes aren’t fatal)
The most surprising part to me is ram drivers wearing seatbelts
The title and color pallet selection here seems backwards? Honda in red is actually the safest, while Tesla in teal is the most dangerous.
If you died in a Tesla there was a 93.4% chance that you had a seatbelt on. So wearing a seatbelt in a Tesla barely makes a difference in the outcome of a crash. While in a Honda you were far more likely to die if you didn’t have your seatbelt on than if you did.
Teslas are very aggressive about seatbelt warnings, I can hardly reposition my car in the driveway without a seatbelt on, it keeps trying to put it into park on me.
No way, in this day and age?!
I’m not sure what this is really explaining. If the vehicle was involved in a fatal crash, how often was the driver not wearing a seatbelt. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t indicate anything particularly about the safety of the vehicle. Tesla is an outlier – does that mean that it’s unsafe even with a seatbelt on? Are the Hondas so safe that you need to not be wearing a seatbelt for the crash to be fatal?
Wait, this isn’t showing overall seatbelt usage, but seatbelt usage *among crashes that were fatal*, per make? I don’t think the title is accurate at all.
So this doesn’t say that Honda drivers don’t use their seatbelt as much as Tesla drivers, but more suggests that the only way you’ll die in a Honda is by not wearing your seatbelt?
94% of people who died in a Tesla were wearing their seatbelt and died anyway. Whereas 1/3 of Honda deaths are explained by people not wearing a seatbelt.
What this is telling me is Subaru, RAM and Tesla owners are dying whether they wear their seatbelt or not.
Your methodology seems fundamentally flawed—if a large percentage *of those killed* were wearing seatbelts, that seems to imply that the car is so unsafe that wearing a seatbelt doesn’t help.
Is this normalized by frequency of crashes of each car make?
Option A: Hondas are super safe (when belted) so a very large chunk of deaths happened to unbelted drivers.
Option B: Hondas are uniquely unsafe for unbelted drivers so they are disproportionately killed
I’m not sure people are interpreting this data correctly. It doesn’t make any conclusions, yet people are looking at it as if Honda drivers are irresponsible maniacs or something.
In reality, it could simply mean: if you’re killed in a Honda, there’s a VERY good chance it’s because you weren’t wearing a seatbelt. Whereas in a Tesla, wearing a seatbelt is far less of a factor in whether or not you die.
It says absolutely nothing about the frequency of fatal crashes of any particular make of car, and it says nothing about the seatbelt habits of people who drive that brand.
This is % of crashes, not the rate within a specific brand. So it doesn’t account for the varied prevalence of car brands among all cars? It also doesn’t account for higher accident risk among different vehicles or higher fatality risk in a crash between different vehicles? Am I missing something? I don’t see how any conclusions about a „car brand’s drivers“ could be drawn from this data
This is a horribly misleading representation of data.
These data mostly yield information on the type of people who drive a certain car manufacturer moreso than being an indictment on the manufacturer itself.
Who drives used Hondas? Pontiacs? Mercurys?
Also, if the make lasts longer (Hondas last 15+ years), they would likely be overrepresented on the dataset.
I’d be interested to see vehicle types: trucks, suvs, sedans, etc.
My honest question;
Why the fuck aren’t people wearing seatbelts while driving?!
Logically you would expect that a fatal accident is more likely if you are not wearing your seatbelt. Should we actually read this then as Teslas being _the most dangerous_ since there’s such a high percentage of fatal accidents that occur even with people wearing their seatbelt?
This graph is terribly misleading. This graph is NOT telling us that 38.5% of Honda drivers don’t wear seat belts. It’s telling us that of all the fatal crashes involving Hondas, 38.5% of the fatalities were not wearing a seat belt. That’s not only RADICALLY different from the title, but it’s also surprisingly low. That means 61.5% of those killed in a Honda were wearing their seat belt.
The only thing this graph is good for is showing you which make you’re safest in if you aren’t wearing a seat belt. It does not tell us anything about the overall number of people that don’t wear their seat belt.
This doesn’t show how many drivers wear seatbelts, it shows what percent of fatalities wore a seatbelt, sorted by brand. Those are *very different statistics*
This data is incorrect at identifying which drivers don’t wear seatbelts.
What it actually implies: Hondas are generally safer to drive, so in order to have a fatal crash in one, you need to not be wearing a seatbelt.
This chart implies that Tesla drivers are upstanding citizens who always wear their seatbelts, but what it actually shows is that you’re more likely to get in a fatal crash in a Tesla even if you’re wearing your seatbelt.
This is just as much of a car safety chart as it is a responsible driver chart.
Maybe I am being retarded here, but all else being equal, wouldn’t you want this number to be as high as possible? A higher number indicates that people who are dying are dying *because* they aren’t wearing a seatbelt. The lower the number means the less impact a seatbelt has on overall survivability. Right? Might be a fallacy I’ve been awake for far too long.
That’s nuts, I am shocked I would never have imagined people still don’t wear belts. Goes to show how ignorant Americans are in regards to there own safety. Clearly it must correlate to lots of issues within society. 🙄
I wonder how skewed this is by the fact that certain car brands (Honda etc) are SO safe that crashes aren’t usually fatal unless the driver is doing something insanely risky, like not wearing a seatbelt.
I’m stunned that people still don’t wear seat belts
I find the qualifier “in fatal crashes” to be interesting. You could interpret it in a way opposite than the coloring suggests. Let’s take Tesla. Of all the fatal crashes Tesla was involved in, they had the most constant seatbelt usage. So, Teslas could be killing other people at higher rates or Tesla drivers could be getting killed in accidents a lot despite wearing their seatbelts.
We need more data and/or more precise definitions to know for sure whether this graph is better for Tesla than Honda.