A separate thread about Cobra roll bars and safety has prompted me to pull together some facts about motor vehicle crashes for your information.
According to the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), in the 10-year period from 2000 to 2009 there was a total of 61.014 million vehicle collisions in the United States.
Of those, 68.2% were vehicle-to-vehicle crashes, 15.7% involved hitting a fixed object, 13.0% involved hitting another type of object (stationary or moving), and the balance involved something NHTSA labels a "non collision."
The 15 most common types of collisions were as follows:
30.1% - Rear end impact
28.5% - Angle impact (vehicle to vehicle)
7.3% - Sideswipe (vehicle to vehicle)
5.6% - Parked vehicle
4.6% - Animal
3.8% - Other/unknown fixed object
3.4% - Pole/post
3.2% - Curb/culvert/ditch
2.3% - Tree/shrubbery
2.2% - Rollover
2.2% - Head on
1.8% - Guard rail
1.1% - Pedestrian
0.9% - Embankment
0.8% - Cyclist
As you can see, rollovers are pretty uncommon. However, they can be pretty severe: 61.6% of rollovers caused personal injury and 3.0% resulted in death. The one to
really watch for is the vehicle-to-vehicle angle impact; it's both commonplace
and deadly.
Make what you will of these data.