The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) may institute passenger-side frontal crash testing as part of its Top Safety Pick criteria after results from tests on smaller SUVs showed that passengers were at greater risk.
by Staff
June 23, 2016
Photo courtesy of IIHS.
1 min to read
Photo courtesy of IIHS.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) may institute passenger-side frontal crash testing as part of its Top Safety Pick criteria after results from tests on smaller SUVs showed that passengers were at greater risk.
The institute performed 40-mph passenger-side small overlap tests on seven smaller SUVs with good driver-side small overlap ratings. Only one of the vehicles, the 2016 Hyundai Tucson, performed at a level that would merit a good rating, while the others were poor to acceptable.
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Other vehicles tested included the 2015 Buick Encore, 2015 Honda CR-V, 2015 Mazda CX-5, 2014 Nissan Rogue, 2015 Subaru Forester, and 2015 Toyota RAV-4.
Small overlap crashes pose a challenge because they bypass a typical vehicle's main front structure. Since the test was introduced, 13 manufacturers have made structural changes to 97 vehicles. Of these, nearly three-quarters earned a good rating after the changes.
During the small overlap frontal test, a vehicle travels at 40 mph toward a 5-foot-tall rigid barrier. Twenty-five percent of the total width of the vehicle strikes the barrier on the driver side.
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