October’s issue includes our annual 20 Questions feature. You can find this and 19 other questions–and answers–there.
Nearly every new vehicle rated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) earns high marks in head-on and side crash tests.
Even the body-on-frame Jeep Wrangler, which tipped over twice during IIHS tests and doesn’t have full-length side-curtain airbags, performed well in most measures of crashworthiness.
IIHS testing—especially the small-overlap frontal crash test—uncovers more vehicle weaknesses than NHTSA’s. Performed on the driver’s and passenger’s sides of the vehicle, the small-overlap test shows what happens when the front corner of a vehicle (25 percent of its width) collides with a pole or another vehicle. Models that haven’t been redesigned in a decade or more don’t have enough bracing or high-strength steel to ace this particular test.
The Toyota Tundra, Nissan Frontier, Dodge Challenger, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Mitsubishi Mirage G4 all earn Poor ratings for their ability to protect occupants from leg and foot injuries in this test. In countries with looser safety standards (India, for example), features such as airbags and ABS are optional, and brand-new cars sometimes earn zero-star ratings when tested by agencies in those markets.
More 20 Questions
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