Hello r/insurance! I am starting the process of looking for a used car for my teenagers to share. Like many parents with new drivers in the house, I am absolutely terrified about them getting into an accident and getting hurt, killed, or causing it to happen to someone else. They are both doing fine with their lessons and improving every day, but every teenager is inexperienced, even the smartest teenager can be an impulsive moron every now and then, and hey, parents tend to worry. A friend of mine and I have been arguing back and forth about the safest type of vehicle for them to drive. He insists that since head-on collisions are the deadliest type of crashes, that driving a big vehicle with a high center of gravity is the best choice (full size pickup or SUV). I think he's overlooking the fact that high centers of gravity are more prone to rollover, and although rollovers are less deadly than head-ons, they happen with more frequency and can be very catastrophic (or so the internet tells me).

Internet research hasn't yielded a ton of useful information (top results are mostly personal injury attorneys). Crash test ratings don't show the whole picture because they rate cars by type/size, and never compare the categories against each other. I'd rather not cough up for something big if I can be reasonably certain that my kids are safe in something smaller. And I know that the type of driving a person does on a regular basis plays into this quite a bit, so let's assume that they'll be mostly on city streets and freeways, with the occasional trip down 2-lane country highways and farm-to-market roads.

For those of you who are exposed to all the data, what would you put your kids in to keep them safe?