Benjamin Shiller

Car Safety Ratings

Our vehicle safety ratings (RealSafeCars.com) are based on knowledge gleaned from my research with Bhoomija Ranjan and Siqi Liu. The crashworthiness ratings explicitly convey the inherent risk of death attributable to the vehicle, by relating crash test measurements to vehicle fatality rates. Crucially, we account for selection of unsafe drivers by including in the model both continuous crash test measurements (not observed by consumers) and discrete ratings (observed by consumers and may induce selection of safe/unsafe drivers), but base our ratings only on the former. Additional details are provided in the paper and on the website. I would like to thank my brother---philosophy PhD / expert web designer---for making this a reality.