The Dodge Grand Caravan Killed 1,782 People. Almost None of Them Were Drunk.

Before you sign that lease, you might want to see this. The Dodge Grand Caravan — America’s default family hauler for three decades — killed 1,782 people between 2014 and 2023. And here’s the part that should keep you up at night: only 15.3% of drivers in those fatal crashes were impaired. That’s the lowest rate of any vehicle in the entire FARS database.

Let that sink in. When a Mustang crashes fatally, there’s a 21.9% chance the driver was drunk or high. A Camaro? 23%. The Charger? 22.7%. The Grand Caravan? 15.3%. These aren’t bar cars. These aren’t muscle-car joyrides. These are parents driving kids to soccer practice, families heading to Costco, grandparents picking up grandchildren.

The numbers tell a story of sheer exposure. Dodge sold the Grand Caravan continuously from 1984 to 2020 — 36 model years, an estimated 1.14 million still on the road during the observation period. That fleet generated roughly 13.4 billion vehicle miles per year, producing a fatality rate of 1.33 deaths per 100 million VMT. That’s actually below the sedan average. The Grand Caravan isn’t particularly dangerous per mile — it’s just everywhere.

But the model year data reveals a darker pattern. The 2005 Grand Caravan alone accounts for 192 fatalities — more than any other single model year. The 2002 (109 deaths), 2003 (97), and 2001 (64) models aren’t far behind. These are the high-mileage survivors from the era before electronic stability control, before side curtain airbags became standard, before Chrysler bothered updating the platform. The third-generation Grand Caravan (2001–2007) sits on technology from the late 1990s.

Compare the Grand Caravan to the Honda CR-V, a vehicle that essentially replaced the minivan in American family life: the CR-V has more deaths (2,072) but on a much larger fleet (3.15M vs 1.14M), giving it a rate of just 0.53 per 100M VMT — less than half the Grand Caravan’s. Or compare it to the Chrysler Town & Country — literally the same vehicle with leather seats — which posted 1,303 deaths on a similar fleet. Same bones, same body count.

Dodge killed the Grand Caravan in 2020, replaced by the Chrysler Pacifica, which is genuinely safer by every measure. But there are still over a million Grand Caravans on American roads right now, aging through the used-car ecosystem, accumulating miles with families who chose them because they were affordable and practical. The irony of the Grand Caravan is that its buyers did everything right — they drove sober, they drove sensibly, they drove a vehicle designed for families — and 1,782 of them are still dead.