In case you haven’t noticed, cars and trucks have become significantly more advanced over the last few years, and most of those advancements have thankfully come in the name of safety. It wasn’t that long ago that having antilock brakes and airbags was a significant breakthrough in modern tech. But now, with everything from pedestrian detection to automated emergency braking to adaptive cruise control, cars have never been safer.
With that in mind, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has raised its standards for automakers to earn their top awards in 2024.
The independent company’s top two awards are now the Top Safety Pick, and much like every app and streaming service uses to denote a slightly more premium variant, the Top Safety Pick+ returns as the ultimate prize. Regarding the updated standards, IIHS says:
Last year’s biggest change was the replacement of the original side crash test with an updated version that uses a heavier barrier traveling at a higher speed. Initially, an acceptable or good rating was enough to garner the lower-tier TOP SAFETY PICK award. In 2024, a good rating is required for either TOP SAFETY PICK or TOP SAFETY PICK+.
In addition, vehicles now need an acceptable or good rating in a revised version of the pedestrian front crash prevention evaluation to qualify for either award. The new version replaces the earlier daytime and nighttime tests with a single evaluation that includes some test runs in daylight and some in the dark. Last year, vehicles could earn the lower-tier award regardless of whether they could detect and avoid pedestrians in the dark.
The Moderate Front Overlap test is when “a vehicle travels at 40 mph toward a barrier with a deformable face made of aluminum honeycomb. Forty percent of the total width of the vehicle strikes the barrier on the driver’s side.
To attain the Top Safety Pick+, vehicles must now earn an ‘acceptable’ or ‘good’ rating for their updated front overlap test, adding to the standard driver’s crash test dummy. The new test also places a dummy in the back seat behind the driver, emphasizing the long overdue need to tend to somewhat neglected rear passengers.
Just 22 cars earned the gold medal of crash test safety for 2024 in the form of the Top Safety Pick+, which requires the following:
This exceptional level of safety has only 22 winners across six categories:
Sitting just one rung down (but still admirable) is the Top Safety Pick, which requires the following:
This award has 49 recipients across twelve categories:
The post IIHS has raised its standards for crash test safety — these are the safest cars for 2024 appeared first on The Manual.
2024-03-17T17:02:37Z dg43tfdfdgfd