The Top Safety Pick+ list just got more exclusive

With the onslaught of new high-tech safety gadgets, vehicle safety is much more than crash-test ratings. These days it’s also about how well a vehicle could prevent a crash in addition to how it performs after impact.

To that end, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has, once again, raised the bar for its highest award: the Top Safety Pick+.

In addition to requiring a “Good” Rating in the five crashworthiness tests, a TSP+ also requires that a vehicle get an “Advanced” or “Superior” rating for front-crash prevention and a “Good” or “Acceptable” rating in headlight evaluations.

The latter requirement is new for the 2017, and only 38 vehicles have received the highest IIHS honor for the 2017 model year to date. (Photo gallery above.)

"The field of contenders is smaller this year because so few vehicles have headlights that do their job well, but it's not as small as we expected when we decided to raise the bar for the awards," said Adrian Lund, IIHS president, in a press release. "Manufacturers are focusing on improving this basic safety equipment, and we're confident that the winners' list will grow as the year progresses."

Toyota Motor Sales and American Honda Motor Co. were the “big winners” in terms of taking home the TSP+ accolades, winning nine and five, respectively.

WHY ADD HEADLIGHT TESTS?

According to the IIHS, about half of traffic deaths occur from dusk to dawn. Thus the agency launched headlight ratings in the spring after discovering that government standards have a huge variation in the amount of light headlights must provide.

Under this added scrutiny, most vehicles do a poor job of providing an acceptable amount of light projected onto the road. In fact, just seven models achieved “Good”-rated headlights: Chevrolet Volt, Honda Ridgeline, Hyundai Elantra, Hyundai Santa Fe, Subaru Legacy, Toyota Prius, v and Volvo XC60.

SAFTEY RATINGS MAKE ALL CARS BETTER

In addition to the obvious, safety ratings matter because they encourage automakers compete to get top scores. That, ultimately, forces the availability of safety features down to the least expensive vehicles.

Since IIHS has made the auto braking feature a part of the TSP+ award, 21 models now come standard with this feature. The least expensive vehicle on the list is the Toyota Yaris iA with a base price of $16,815.

While many other cost-conscious vehicles don’t make it standard (yet), it is available on vehicles such as the Hyundai Elantra, Mazda3 and Nissan Sentra.

The best news, however, is most major automakers have now committed to making automatic emergency braking standard on all vehicles by 2022. Just a guess, but its inclusion on the IIHS TSP+ criteria probably had something to do with that.

For a full list of TSP and TSP+ awards, be sure to visit the IIHS website.

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