Of 178 popular passenger vehicle models in the study, the lowest death rate was for 1990-93 Volvo 240s--an average of 0.1 driver deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles. The highest rate was for 1991-1993 two-wheel-drive Geo Trackers--3.2 driver deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles. The average for all vehicles was 1.1 driver deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles.

To arrive at these figures, the Insurance Institute used data from the federal government Fatal Accident Reporting System and vehicle registration counts from R.L. Polk. The article specified, "All are 1989-93 model year vehicles with at least 100,000 registered vehicle years or 20 driver deaths during calendar years 1990-94." When a vehicle changed substantially during the study, only data for the most recent model were included. The authors acknowledged that the characteristics of drivers who tended to purchase certain vehicles influenced death rates; therefore, vehicle design would not be the sole variable.

The article made the following comparisons between the best and the worst: the 1990-93 Volvo 240 and the 1991-93 Geo Tracker:

• Six times as many deaths occurred in two-wheel-drive Geo Trackers during 1990-94, compared with Volvo 240s. This disparity occurred even though there were many fewer Trackers on the road than Volvos.

• No driver deaths at all occurred in single-vehicle crashes of the Volvo 240 during 1990-94. In contrast, the driver death rate in single-vehicle crashes of the Geo Tracker was exceeded only by the rate for the Chevrolet Corvette among all 178 cars the Institute studied.

• Nor did any deaths occur in rollover crashes of the Volvo 240 during 1990-94. Yet the Geo Tracker was one of only three passenger vehicles with driver death rates in rollovers higher than 2.0 per 10,000 registrations.

• The Geo Tracker's overall driver death rate during 1990-94 was 32 times as high as the Volvo 240's.