Every year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) releases a list of the safest vehicles of 2012. Vehicles that end up on this list must pass a series of crash tests designed to determine how safe the car or truck would be in the case of a crash. Is your car on this year’s list?
For 2012, the IIHS has selected 115 vehicles that it considers to be the safest choices (for 2012 vehicles). Last year, the IIHS only found a total of 66 vehicles that it considered to be the safest ones from 2011.
To get onto this list, a car, van, or SUV has to preform well in crash tests. These tests simulate accidents where an impact occurs from the front, from the side, or from the rear of the vehicle. The vehicles are also evaluated on how well they do in the case of a rollover.
Each vehicle gets a rating based on how well it is able to protect the people inside when a crash occurs. It can be rated as “good”, “acceptable”, “marginal”, or “poor”. There are twelve different categories of vehicles that are a part of this year’s list.
This year, the IIHS has cited Honda of America as having the most improvement since last year. This is because Honda did significant upgrades on the roofs of the ten Honda or Acura models that did not make the list last year because they didn’t do well enough in the rollover protection test.
Just a few Minicars made the list this year: Fiat 500 (built after July 2011), Ford Fiesta sedan and hatchback, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris hatchback (but only the 4-door models).
Several small cars made the list, including: Chevrolet Cruze, Chevrolet Sonic, Chevrolet Volt, Ford Focus 4-door, Honda Civic 4-door, Honda CR-Z, Honda Insight, Hyundai Elantra, Kia Forte (only the sedan models), Kia Soul, Lexus CT 200h, Mazda 3 (the sedan and the hatchback), Mitsubishi Lancer (except for the Ralliart and Evolution models), Nissan Cube, Nissan Juke, Nissan Leaf, Scion tC, Scion xB, Scion xD, Subaru Impreza (except for the WRX), Toyota Corolla, Toyota Prius, Volkswagen Golf (only 4-door models), and the Volkwagen GTI (only 4-door models).
For the categories of Large Family Cars, the IIHS selected Buick LaCrosse, Buick Regal, Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, Ford Taurus, and Toyota Avalon. If you are looking for a new minivan, you might want to look at the Chrysler Town & Country, Dodge Grand Caravan, Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna, and the Volkswagen Routan. These are just a few of the categories on the 2012 list of safest vehicles selected by the IIHS.
Image by Michael Gil on Flickr