Only Two Small SUVs Earn Good Crash Ratings In Updated IIHS Tests

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety updated the front crash test with moderate overlap by adding a rear passenger. The agency put this revised evaluation to the test by putting 15 small SUVs through an assessment. Only two of them received top scores of Good. Nine gets a Bad rating – the worst possible classification.

The Ford Escape and the Volvo XC40 were the only two vehicles tested with an overall rating of Good. The Toyota RAV4 earned an Acceptable score, which is one step lower in the classification. The Audi Q3, Nissan Rogue and Subaru Forester are Marginal, which is an additional level of worse in the hierarchy. All the rest scored Bad. All ratings are in the table below.

An earlier version of the moderate overlap front test had the vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers per hour) crash into an aluminum honeycomb. The impact zone is 40 percent of the total width of the vehicle hitting the driver’s side. The updated evaluation places a crash dummy representing a small woman or a 12-year-old child behind the driver.

All vehicles tested had an overall rating of Good in the crash evaluation of the previous version. It is this additional requirement for rear passenger safety that changes the rating in this reassessment.

IIHS changed the front overlap test to moderate as most of the vehicles received a Good score in the evaluation. However, the automaker has not made a similar improvement for rear seat passengers. According to agency data, models from 2007 or later had a 46 percent higher risk of fatal injury to the rear than the front.

“Thanks to improvements in automakers, drivers in most vehicles are nearly 50 percent less likely to be killed in a frontal crash today than 25 years ago. Our latest test is a challenge for manufacturers to bring those same benefits to the backseat,” said IIHS President David Harkey.