The insurance industry’s list of cars and trucks that do the best job of keeping owners alive in a crash jumped 82 percent this year against a backdrop of U.S. recalls of older models that were killing their passengers.
The number of vehicles ranked best for keeping occupants safe in a crash rose to 71 for 2015 models from 39 a year ago even as the crash tests used to pick winners got harder, according to a report released today by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“Our tests show that the designs of vehicles to protect and even prevent crashes are greatly improving,” IIHS President Adrian Lund said in an interview. “The key thing people need to keep in mind is that defects are the rarity. Automakers are trying to get ahead of the problems and that’s why there’s so many recalls.”
Safety improvements among the newest models have been overshadowed this year as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued fines and subpoenas to pressure automakers to fix ignitions switches and air bags in models more than decade old linked to deaths and injuries. That focus on defects pushed U.S. recalls so far this year to more than 60 million, almost double the previous record.
The insurance group, which does its own crash tests and enforces safety designs that are more strict than those required by NHTSA, is urging automakers to add technology that applies the brakes without driver control to avoid a crash along with stronger bodies for certain kinds of frontal crashes, according to the report today.
IIHS is recognizing the safetest vehicles in its category Top Safety Pick+, which it introduced last year to reward automakers that achieved good or acceptable performance in the small overlap test, in which 25 percent of a vehicle's front end on the driver's side strikes a rigid barrier at 40 mph. The test replicates what happens when the front corner of a vehicle collides with another vehicle or an object like a tree or utility pole. Although this type of crash is responsible for many deaths and serious injuries, it wasn't addressed by other frontal tests conducted by IIHS or the federal government. Cars that got a Top Safety Pick+ had to rate at least good or acceptable on the small overlap test. The cars were also rated from basic to superior on front-crash protection.
The safest vehicles, which earned a Top Safety Pick+, include:
Small cars
• Honda Civic 4-door
* Mazda 3
built after October 2013
• Toyota Prius
built after November 2013