The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC, a midsize luxury SUV, earned a Top Safety Pick award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) when equipped with specific headlights and optional front crash prevention.

To qualify for a 2020 Top Safety Pick award, a vehicle must earn good ratings in six crashworthiness evaluations, including the driver-side small overlap front, passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests.

It also needs advanced or superior ratings for both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention, as well as an acceptable or good headlight rating for at least one of its available headlight packages.

The GLC misses out on the higher-tier Top Safety Pick+ award, which requires good or acceptable ratings for all the available headlight packages. The SUV’s optional curve-adaptive LED projectors earn a good rating, but the base-level LED reflectors were rated poor, due to inadequate illumination. Mercedes-Benz is working to address that problem for 2021.

The award applies only to vehicles equipped with an optional front crash prevention system. When equipped with the system, the GLC earns a superior rating in both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention evaluations.