The Chevy Equinox Has a ‘Fine’ Death Rate. 1,056 People Died Anyway.

The Chevrolet Equinox posts a 0.36 fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, comfortably below the SUV class median of 0.54.^[1] Nobody is running congressional hearings over that number. The Equinox is, by the dull math of averages, a perfectly unremarkable crossover that GM sold 2.4 million of, and 1,056 people who rode in or were struck by one are dead.

Unremarkable is the problem. The Mazda CX-5 occupies the same showroom shelf: compact crossover, similar footprint, comparable price. Its death rate is 0.12 per 100M VMT, producing 162 fatalities across a million-unit fleet.^[1] The RAV4 manages 0.19, the Forester hits 0.26, and even the Tucson posts 0.34. If the Equinox matched the CX-5’s rate across its actual mileage base, roughly 354 people would have died instead of 1,056, which means approximately 700 families got the phone call because GM built a crossover that was good enough but not good, then sold it in numbers that turned a small per-mile gap into a two-decade mass-casualty event.

GM had two full redesign cycles to close a 3× gap with the class leader and used neither; the third-generation 2018 Equinox produced 120 fatalities from that single model year, the nameplate’s worst, even as cumulative deaths from the 2015–2020 models (506) nearly tripled those from the 2005–2010 models (191).^[1] The fleet grew, and the rate stayed put.

Now GM has positioned the Equinox EV as its $35,000 volume play for the electric transition, and in two production years it has been recalled twice for the identical defect: a pedestrian alert sound system too quiet to comply with FMVSS 141.^[2][3] First recall: 23,700 units, model year 2024; second: 81,177 units, model years 2025–2026, a different calibration that failed the same way. The gas Equinox kills at three times the best-in-class rate; the electric one rolls toward pedestrians in silence because GM miscalibrated the speaker, fixed it, and miscalibrated it again.

The counterargument writes itself: the Ford Escape posts 0.95, the Tahoe reaches 2.49, and the Equinox is genuinely below the class average of 0.95. Measured against GM’s own fleet, it is a success. Measured against what a compact crossover can actually achieve, it is 700 deaths away from the standard Mazda proved is reachable, and GM had a clean slate with the EV and immediately produced two recalls for the same pedestrian defect.

What to do: If you are cross-shopping compact crossovers, the CX-5 (0.12), RAV4 (0.19), and Forester (0.26) all beat the Equinox on fatality rate. If you own an Equinox EV from model years 2024 through 2026, check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls for the pedestrian sound recall; the fix is a free dealer software update.

Limitations: FARS captures fatal crashes only; VMT estimates introduce ±15% uncertainty. The CX-5 comparison controls for vehicle class but not driver demographics, regional distribution, or average driver age, any of which could partially explain the rate gap. The Equinox EV pedestrian sound recalls involve a compliance defect, not a crash-causation finding; NHTSA has not linked the sound system failure to any pedestrian injuries.