Study: The Best Drivers on the Road Drive Old American Minivans
Let’s face it. Minivans are far from the most exciting vehicles on the road. For the most part, these family haulers offer uninspiring designs that don’t necessarily pull on your heartstrings. However, playing it on the safe side certainly comes in handy when discussing safety. That’s exactly what a new study covering America’s best drivers set out to prove.
After analyzing over 4 million separate car insurance applications, Insurify found that the safest motorists drive old American minivans. To put this into perspective, the study found that 86 percent of Chevrolet Astro owners have a clean driving record. There’s one major reason why this is.
These are the best drivers on the road
As mentioned earlier, Insurify evaluated over 4 million car insurance applications to create this list of best drivers on the road. The percentage you’ll see below corresponds to the number of owners that own a particular model with a clean record. These are the best drivers across the U.S.
| Model | Percentage With Clean Driving Record |
| Chevrolet Astro | 86 |
| Chevrolet Uplander | 85.23 |
| Dodge Caravan | 85.04 |
| Ford Windstar | 84.76 |
| Nissan Quest | 84.56 |
| Cadillac Deville | 83.74 |
| Toyota Sienna | 83.59 |
| Chevrolet Corvette | 83.19 |
| Chevrolet Lumina | 82.91 |
| Lincoln Navigator | 82.80 |
| National Average | 78.21 |
As you might imagine, there are a couple of notable winners in this list of best drivers. For starters, six of the top 10 cars are minivans. Additionally, four of those are old American models that have long since been discontinued.
According to Insurify, there are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that minivan drivers don’t tend to drive their cars fairly hard. This is because these family haulers aren’t exactly built for high performance.
The second is that these vehicles rate highly because of careful drivers. Despite being older and offer almost no advanced safety features, these careful motorists don’t have trouble staying out of trouble.
Are minivans safe for families?
If you want to join this list of best drivers, it might be time to consider a minivan as your daily driver. However, despite their massive size, not all of the models on sale have excellent crash-safety standards.
As of writing, there are only five brand-new minivans on sale in the U.S. Of these; the IIHS only found two models worthy of its Top Safety Pick+ award. The remaining models seemed to fail at least one major category.
Before we continue, it is worth considering that Kia just released a brand-new version of its Sedona that hasn’t undergone testing.
As a result, if you want to buy one of these for your family, you’ll want to double down on your research before pulling the trigger.
How do the rest of the drivers on the road stack up?
At the very bottom of that list of best drivers, you’ll find the national average currently sits at 78.21 percent. All things considered, that isn’t extremely far off from the top spot at 86 percent. Regardless, it seems modern safety systems and high-tech cars still can’t outperform cautious and defensive drivers on the road.
