When evaluating the safety and rigidity of cars, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety puts vehicles through their paces in a series of crashworthiness tests. Under a variety of scenarios – whether it’s sending cars into barriers or vice versa – the IIHS analyzes how well the car under scrutiny keeps the driver safe.
The key word there is “driver.” A study published by the independent safety watchdog last year hinted that automakers appear to be skimping out on proper protection on the other side of the car.
David Zuby, IIHS’s executive vice president and chief research officer, said that because the tests are conducted on the driver’s side, automakers are obviously going to focus on that side, because after all, every car has a driver, but not every car has a passenger.
The IIHS announced today that it will officially begin testing the passenger side of the car in its small front overlap crashworthiness tests.
(ullstein bild via Getty Images)
“In fact, we encouraged them to do that in the short term if it meant that they could quickly make driver-side improvements to more vehicles,” Zuby said in the study. “As time goes by, though, we would hope they ensure similar levels of protection on both sides.”
It appears that time is now. Starting in 2018, vehicles must have good or acceptable ratings on the passenger side of the car in the small front overlap test in order to qualify for the IIHS’s coveted Top Safety Pick+ rating.
As past IIHS tests have shown, the small front overlap, which sends a car into a barrier meant to simulate hitting a telephone pole or tree, proved to be problematic for automakers. The angle of the small front overlap test, which the IIHS introduced in 2012, proved to be tricky, as it bypasses the main front structure on the car. Nowadays, it has become expected for cars to pass the small front overlap test with flying colors, and the majority does.
Now that the small front overlap has become a walk in the park for automakers, the IIHS felt it was time to apply the same standards to the other side of the dashboard.
A small group of compact crossover SUVs were given provisional passenger-side evaluations last year by the institute.
(Hyundai )
In its most recent study, the institute put 13 midsize cars to the test and found that all of them had either a good or acceptable rating on the passenger side. The only issues appeared to stem from airbag protection. The dummy’s head in the tests managed to slip past the front airbag and side airbag and strike the corner of the dashboard in some of the vehicles.
Of the group of 13 midsize cars tested, only the 2017 Volkswagen Passat and 2017 Chevrolet Malibu earned acceptable ratings. The rest, which included the 2017 Ford Fusion, 2017 Honda Accord, 2017 Lincoln MKZ, 2018 Subaru Legacy and 2018 Outback, 2017 Hyundai Sonata, 2017 Mazda 6, 2017 Nissan Altima and Maxima, 2018 Toyota Camry and the 2017 Volkswagen Jetta earned good ratings.
IIHS Senior Research Engineer Becky Mueller, who was in charge of overseeing development of the passenger-side small front overlap, said that there were fewer glaring deficiencies than another group of cars the institute evaluated last year.
“The midsize cars we tested didn’t have any glaring structural deficiencies on the right side,” she said in the study. “Optimizing airbags and safety belts to provide better head protection for front-seat passengers appears to be the most urgent task right now.”
The group of midsize cars tested this year performed better overall than the crossovers from 2016, showing the industry is listening and adapting to more stringent standards.
(Toyota)
In that study from last year, the provisional results for the passenger-side small front overlap showed that six out of the nine compact crossover SUVs (taking into account those with platform-sharing twins) tested had good or acceptable ratings. The best of the bunch were the 2016 Hyundai Tucson, the 2015 Buick Encore, 2015 Honda CR-V and 2015 Mazda CX-5.
Mueller said that because more than 1,600 front passengers were killed in front crashes in 2014, the IIHS felt it was important to begin considering in future safety evaluations.
“When we published that research, we said we were considering adding a passenger-side test to our awards criteria,” Mueller said. “Clearly, some manufacturers were paying attention. Many of the cars in this group are equipped with improved passenger airbags that appear to be designed to do well in our test and in an oblique test that the government is considering adding to its safety ratings.”
