A new study shows that improvements to vehicle safety driven by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash testing have saved an estimated 48,352 lives and more than $500 billion since the program launched in 1995.
The findings cover the years 1999 through 2024 — three decades of progress in making cars safer for everyday drivers.
To mark the anniversary, IIHS staged a dramatic crash test pitting a 1996 Chevrolet Blazer against its 2026 counterpart.
“These results highlight the role of IIHS ratings in driving many of the key vehicle safety improvements of the past 30 years,” said Joe Nolan, IIHS chief operating officer. “Our ratings program, in turn, has only been possible because of the unwavering support of our member companies in funding our work.”
Old vs. new
To show just how much vehicles have improved, IIHS crashed a 1996 Chevrolet Blazer head-on into a 2026 model of the same vehicle. The results were dramatic.
The driver of the newer Blazer would likely have walked away with bumps and bruises. The driver of the older model, however, would have faced serious — possibly fatal — injuries.
The cabin of the 2026 Blazer held its shape during the crash, and nearly every measurement taken from the test dummy inside showed little injury risk. The only exception was a slightly elevated risk of foot or lower leg injury, which was still within an acceptable range.
The 1996 Blazer was a different story. The crash crumpled the cabin, shoving the dashboard and steering column into the dummy’s lap. The airbag hit the dummy in the chin and snapped its head back so violently that it separated from the body during the test.
“Although this isn’t likely to happen to a human driver, it illustrates the extreme forces the dummy absorbed,” IIHS noted. Engineers use precise measurements from sensors inside the dummy — not just visible damage — to estimate how badly a real person would be hurt. Those measurements indicated the crash would almost certainly have caused serious injuries to the driver’s head, neck and both legs.
In its original crash evaluation, the 1996 Blazer earned a “poor” rating, consistent with what the head-to-head test showed. That rating applied to models built between 1995 and 2004. Chevrolet brought the Blazer back in 2019, and those newer models earn “good” ratings.
Breaking down the numbers
Researchers looked at five different crash tests to calculate how many lives the program has saved: a front crash test, two tests simulating crashes where only part of the front of the car makes contact, a side-impact test and a roof-strength test.
They compared real-world death rates for vehicles that scored well against those that scored poorly, then estimated how many more people would have died if car safety hadn’t improved.
The three front-impact tests together accounted for 28,697 of the lives saved. The largest contributor was the moderate overlap front test, launched in 1995, which simulates a head-on collision between two vehicles each traveling at just under 40 mph.
That test was updated in 2022 to also measure how well back-seat passengers are protected.
Two additional front-impact tests — introduced in 2012 and 2017 — simulate crashes where only the edge of the car takes the hit, such as clipping a tree. Those two tests were combined into a single rating in 2024.
The side-impact test program, launched in 2003, was credited with saving 18,224 lives. It mimics the kind of crash where one vehicle runs into the side of another — commonly known as a T-bone collision. The test was updated in 2021 to reflect how larger, heavier SUVs have changed the nature of those crashes.
A roof-strength test, used to evaluate how well a vehicle holds up in a rollover crash, saved an estimated 1,432 lives. IIHS ran that test from 2009 to 2022, when it was discontinued after the federal government adopted similar safety standards.
A nearly 900-fold return on investment
Researchers also put a dollar figure on the program’s impact, using a standard measure from the U.S. Department of Transportation that estimates what society is willing to pay to prevent a single traffic death. That calculation does not include direct costs like medical bills, so the true financial impact is likely even higher.
By that measure, the safety improvements driven by IIHS crash tests saved society $538 billion. Over that same period, IIHS received $600 million in funding from its insurance company members — making the program’s return on investment nearly 900 times what was spent.
“It feels strange to talk about the monetary value of a person’s life, even to researchers,” said Amy Schumacher, IIHS statistician and lead author of the study. “But it’s a useful way to weigh the cost-effectiveness of different interventions.”
When IIHS first introduced each of these tests, most vehicles on the market performed poorly. By the time the tests were updated or retired, nearly every new model was earning a top score.
“The difference between the two vehicles could not be clearer,” Nolan said. “It’s inspiring to think that there are thousands of parents, children and friends alive today because of the safety improvements that IIHS has promoted.”
For more information, visit iihs.org.