The most popular cars favoured by young drivers are also the least safe, a new study has found safeauto.Cars including the Ford Laser or Hyundai Excel driven by young women aged 17 to 25 score only one star for auto insurance safety, while young men's preference for VL and VP Holden Commodores record a safety rating of only two stars.The Monash University Accident Research Centre study of more than 250,000 accidents involving young drivers in Australian and New Zealand from 2001 to 2005 found that the choice of car could increase the risk of death or serious injury by an average 11 per cent during an accident.Researcher Dr Stuart Newstead said the type of cars driven by young people - who have the highest crash risk of any age - provided dramatically less protection than older motorists."The cars are usually older, particularly for young males," he said in a statement."Young women tend to drive cars that are both older and smaller than average - placing them at particularly high risk auto insurance."But older cars are not the only problem, Dr Newstead stressed."Young people are still choosing the vehicles with worse injury protection performance," Dr Newstead said.The research found cars including late models of the Ford Focus and Peugeot 307 and the Saab 9-3 (1998-2002 models) had top safety ratings.
