43% of Car Ads Sell Speed. 3% Mention Safety. 11,288 People Died.

According to the toxicology reports on American car advertising, the patient is high on horsepower and hasn't mentioned airbags in years. An IIHS content analysis of 2,500 vehicle advertisements aired between 2018 and 2022 found that 43 percent emphasized performance while only 8 percent brought up safety.^[1] The ratio isn't subtle. For every ad that tells you the car might save your life, five tell you how fast it can go.

Zoom out and it gets uglier. In 2018, roughly one in nine ads carried a safety message; by 2022, it was one in thirty-three, and automakers hadn't just deprioritized safety but evacuated the category entirely. Meanwhile, ads themed around traction nearly doubled from 20 to 38 percent, and speed-themed spots rose from 14 to 19 percent.^[1] The math on what automakers want you thinking about when you write a check is not ambiguous.

Set that against the body count: in 2024, speed-related crashes killed 11,288 people, about 29 percent of every road fatality in America.^[2] That percentage has barely moved in a decade. It just sits there, rock-steady at roughly three out of ten dead drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists, while the ads get louder and the disclaimers get smaller.

IIHS Research Scientist Amber Woods, who led the study with a team of ten coders from the University of Virginia's media studies department, put it plainly: "Advertising like this has helped normalize speeding, masking how dangerous it is. Just think about how different attitudes are toward speeding versus impaired driving."^[1] She has a point that stings. Nobody runs a Super Bowl ad showing a family sedan weaving through traffic after two beers. But a sedan drifting through rain at triple digits with "professional driver, closed course" in eight-point type aired hundreds of times.

Results were weighted by ad spending using Nielsen Ad Intel data, which means the number that matters isn't how many unique ads were performance-themed but how many times performance ads were seen, and high-budget campaigns promoting speed ran on repeat. Whatever niche safety ad existed got a fraction of the impressions. Less than one in ten traction ads also mentioned using those capabilities to avoid a crash.^[1] AWD in a snowstorm wasn't framed as "this might keep you alive." It was "watch this truck blast through a creek."

SUV ads specifically shifted hard. In 2018, 28 percent of SUV advertising centered on performance. By 2022, that hit 45 percent.^[1] SUVs are the vehicle Americans buy for their families, and the industry's primary message to those families rotated from cargo space to cornering speed in four years.

There is a counterargument, and it deserves full voice: automakers will tell you that performance capabilities like traction control, braking distance, and handling are safety features when deployed correctly. That is true, and some of the advertising decline in safety messaging reflects the mainstreaming of features like AEB and blind-spot monitoring into standard equipment rather than premium differentiators. When every car has it, nobody pays to advertise it. Fair enough.

But that argument collapses the moment you watch the actual ads. The Ford Bronco isn't climbing a boulder to demonstrate its emergency-stability program. The Dodge Charger wasn't drifting through an intersection to showcase its lane-departure warning. The traction being sold is aspiration, not protection, and IIHS proved the distinction empirically: less than ten percent of those traction ads so much as whispered the word safety.

Britain bans auto ads that encourage a culture of dangerous driving. "Speed should not be the dominant message" is explicit regulatory language in the BCAP Code.^[3] The United States has no comparable federal regulation. Broadcaster standards from the major networks are vague to the point of decoration. Paramount's policy prohibited "risky behavior portrayed positively" without ever defining risky behavior. NBCUniversal required "standard safety precautions" and mentioned seat belts but never speed. ABC said "safe and lawful driving practices should be depicted at all times" and apparently considered 160-mph closed-course disclaimers compliant.^[1]

Tobacco advertising was banned on television in 1971. Alcohol ads carry "drink responsibly" taglines so universally that the phrase has become a cultural artifact. Automobile advertising for the consumer product that kills 40,000 Americans a year operates under less regulatory scrutiny than a beer commercial.

IIHS President David Harkey suggested automakers and broadcasters "start treating unsafe speed the same way they would drunk driving or failure to use a seat belt."^[1] Starting in 2027, IIHS will require anti-speed and alcohol-detection technology for Top Safety Pick+ ratings.^[4] That's one lever. That advertising budget lever, however, remains untouched.

If you are buying a car and the ad made you feel something about what that car can do at high speed: that was the point, not an accident but a multimillion-dollar campaign tested across focus groups and weighted by Nielsen impression data and designed to make speed feel like freedom rather than the leading contributing factor in 29 percent of every crash that kills someone on a U.S. road. Check the IIHS ratings before you check the 0-60 time. The ad won't tell you to.