This year, 101 vehicles earn safety awards from IIHS, as automakers continue to improve headlights

(These seven soundbites are from David Harkey, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s president. For the full list of winners, see iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks.) “We’re recognizing 65 models with the ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ award for 2022—as improved headlight-offerings boost more vehicles into the top tier. Another 36 models earn the lower-tier ‘Top Safety Pick’ award—for a total of 101 winners, overall. This time last year, there were 90 winners—including 49 ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’.” (:23) “All of the award-winners for 2022 earn ‘good’ ratings in six crashworthiness-tests—and perform well in front-crash-prevention tests. Also, for the 65 ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ recipients, ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ headlights are standard across all trims; in fact, 31 of those models come exclusively with ‘good’-rated headlights.” (:23) “Manufacturers also made vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian front-crash prevention standard on more models this year. Front-crash prevention that earns an ‘advanced’ or ‘superior’ rating in both evaluations is standard on all but two ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ winners—and 30 out of 36 ‘Top Safety Pick’ winners.” (:21) “‘Hyundai Motor Group’ has the most overall awards for 2022, as well as the most awards in each category: 11 ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ and 10 ‘Top Safety Pick’ awards, for a total of 21. ‘Volkswagen Group’ isn’t far behind—with eight ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ and three ‘Top Safety Pick’ awards. Finally, ‘Volvo’ earns 10 awards—all of them being ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’.” (:26) “Last year at this time, we only had two minivans and one pickup-truck on our initial award-winner list. This year, there are four minivans and four pickup-trucks that make the list.” (:13) “We’re excited to see that even more vehicles are on our award-list this year. At a time when shopping for a new car can be a challenge—due to supply-chain issues and chip-shortages—consumers have many more choices, in all vehicle-classes, that will both protect them in a crash, and increase the odds that they will never be in one.” (:19) “Manufacturers deserve congratulations for the steady improvements that they have made since we last updated our award-requirements. However, we plan to push things even further, with several new requirements next year. Two new test-programs will factor into our award-criteria in 2023: an updated and tougher side-crash test, and a new nighttime-pedestrian ‘Automatic Emergency Braking’-test.” (:25)