Choosing the safest vehicles

We’ve done the homework and identified 13 models that not only offer top protection in a crash, but can also help prevent collisions when properly equipped.

By Jim Gorzelany CTW Features

A uto safety has long been a hotbutton issue among new car shoppers, and for good reason. Advances in auto design and occupant protection (along with tougher traffic laws) are credited with helping reduce the number of highway fatalities dramatically over the past 35 years.

In fact autos have been performing so well in crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that both organizations have revamped their testing procedures to make it more difficult for a given model to receive a top score.

The IIHS recently added a socalled small overlap frontal crash test to its evaluation arsenal that purports to mimic the effects of a collision with a tree or utility pole at 40 mph in more of glancing blow, rather than a full-frontal or offset frontal collision. To earn an IIHS “Top Safety Pick” certification, a vehicle now has to not only earn top (“good”) ratings in the Institute’s moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint crash tests, but a good or acceptable ranking in the small overlap frontal crash test.

For its part, NHTSA updated its crash test ratings beginning with the 2011 model year, adding side pole testing, using different sized crash-test dummies, collecting more crash data and compiling the data into a single overall score — still expressed in a five-star system — for each vehicle evaluated.

The next frontier in auto safety lies in advanced collision avoidance technology, which is fast becoming available on mainstream cars, trucks and crossovers. The most basic systems give the driver audible and visual warnings if sensors determine the car is closing in on a vehicle or other obstruction in its path too quickly. Better systems will go ahead and apply the brakes if the driver isn’t reacting fast enough to help prevent — or at least minimize the effects of — a crash.

Last year the IIHS instituted a system to test the effectiveness of such systems, rating them as being either “basic” (warning only), “advanced” (includes an auto-braking function that’s able to avoid a crash or reduce speeds by at least 5 mph in tests conducted at 12 and 25 mph) and “superior” (able to avoid a crash or substantially reduce a vehicle’s speed in both tests). A vehicle must offer one of these systems (on top of receiving the aforementioned scores in its crash tests) to earn a Top Safety Pick+ designation.

Unfortunately such systems are usually optional and are typically bundled in costly packages with other features. Worse, they’re often offered only on the one or two costliest trim levels in a given vehicle line, which makes shopping for what would be one the safest possible vehicles an expensive proposition.

Still, for those who feel the added expense to be well worth the cost, we compiled a list of a dozen of what by all accounts should be among the safest rides on the road and are featuring them in the accompanying box. We started with a list of models the IIHS rated as being “superior” in terms of accident avoidance. We then winnowed down that list to 13 models that were also Top Safety Picks or, if they had not yet been subjected to the IIHS’ small overlap crash test, were given five stars for occupant protection by NHTSA.

One caveat, however. Both IIHS and NHTSA crash tests tend to focus on the industry’s highest-volume models. As such neither the costliest luxury models nor sports cars, both of which tend to be sold in limited numbers, are represented in our list of “safest” cars.

© CTW Features