This year, 90 vehicles earn safety awards from IIHS, as choices expand for consumers

(These five 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 49 models, this year, for providing the highest level of vehicle-safety; that’s more than double the number that earned our ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ award, at this time last year. In total, 90 models earn one of our two safety-awards—compared with 64, when we made last year’s announcement.” “Both of our award-levels require ‘good’ ratings in six crashworthiness-tests. Winners must also be available with front-crash prevention that earns a ‘superior’ or ‘advanced’ rating—in both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluations. Last but not least, ‘Top Safety Pick’-winners must be available with ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ headlights; the ‘plus’-designation is given, though, only to those models that have ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ headlights across all trim-levels and -packages.” “Of all manufacturers, ‘Hyundai Motor Group’—which includes the brands ‘Hyundai’, ‘Kia’, and ‘Genesis’—has the most awards: 12 ‘Top Safety Picks’, and five ‘Top Safety Pick – Pluses’. ‘Volvo’, however, has the most ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ awards, with nine. ‘Mitsubishi’ is the only automaker to have failed to earn a single award, so far. And, [for] ‘General Motors’, the low number of awards that they received—just one at each level—is striking, for such a large manufacturer.” “This year, two minivans—the ‘Honda Odyssey’, and the ‘Toyota Sienna’—qualify for the ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’ award. Meanwhile, the ‘Ram 15-hundred crew-cab’ is the only pickup to earn an award. A year ago, there were no minivans or pickups in the winners’ circle.” “As manufacturers have shown that they can produce headlights with better lighting and less glare, we’ve pushed them to make this improved equipment standard; starting last year, only vehicles with ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ headlights as standard equipment could earn a ‘Top Safety Pick – Plus’. This strategy seems to be working: A year ago, only 23 vehicles qualified for the higher-tier award; today, the number has more than doubled, and the majority of the awards that we’ve handed out for 2021-models include the plus-sign.”