Safest Cars 2014: Some Of The Best Cars May Surprise You

The safest cars in 2014 vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and even based upon the category.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, a list of the top three most reliable cars has also been published. But what may interest you more is the upcoming car from Elio Motors which gets 84 MPG and costs less than any of the competitors.

The Insurance Institute For Highway Safety (IIHS) updates its picks for the safest cars on an annual basis in order to determine “how well a vehicle protects its occupants in a crash. It also rates vehicles for front crash prevention, systems that warn the driver or brake automatically to avoid or mitigate a frontal collision.” For their 2014 Top Safety Pick+ (TSP+) designation, a vehicle must be the best surviving a front crash. In this article we’re only considering vehicles with the TSP+ rating.

For the minicar category there they only included the 2014 Chevrolet Spark as one of the safest cars, but even then it only earned a regular TSP rating and not the coveted TSP+. Basically this means that, as might be expected, minicars in general do not provide that much protection in a crash. Moving up to the small cars category, the 2014 safest cars list includes the 2014 Honda Civic 4-door sedan, 2014 Mazda 3, 2014 Toyota Prius, 2015 Volkswagen Golf, and the 2015 Volkswagen GTI.

Once we move up to the midsize cars there’s more in the safest cars list. In this case, the 2014 Chevrolet Malibu, 2014 Ford Fusion, 2014 Honda Accord 2-door coupe, 2014 Honda Accord 4-door sedan, 2014 Mazda 6, 2014 Subaru Legacy, 2014 Subaru Outback, 2015 Audi A3, 2014 Infiniti Q50, 2014 Lincoln MKZ, and 2014 Volvo S60 win the prize, although the latter four vehicles are considered to be in the midsize luxury category. When it comes to large luxury cars, the 2014 Acura RLX, 2015 Hyundai Genesis, 2014 Mercedes E class, and the 2014 Volvo S80 are also among the safest cars.

Moving up to the small SUV category, the IIHS awarded the 2014 Mazda CX-5, 2014 Mitsubishi Outlander, 2014 Nissan Rogue, and the 2014 Subaru Forester. For midsize SUVs, the list shortens down to the 2014 Chevrolet Equinox, 2014 GMC Terrain, 2014 Toyota Highlander, 2014 Acura MDX, 2014 Mercedes M class, and the 2014 Volvo XC60, although again the latter three vehicles are luxury vehicles.

Now when it comes to minivans only one vehicle was rated as TSP+: the 2014 Honda Odyssey.

To put the 2014 award for the safest cars in perspective, Forbes is reporting that the testing conditions have been updated to be more stringent:

“To be sure, today’s cars are safer than ever, but as ongoing crash testing conducted by NHTSA and the insurance industry-supported Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) proves, some vehicles inherently do a better job in this respect than others. At that, so many autos had been performing so well in such tests both organizations recently revamped their evaluation procedures to actually make it more difficult for a given model to receive a top score. The IIHS added a so-called small overlap frontal crash test to its evaluation arsenal that purports to mimic the effects of a collision with a tree or utility pole at 40 mph in more of glancing blow, rather than a full-frontal or offset frontal collision. Passing the new test is apparently no easy task, with many popular models that otherwise perform well in the institute’s other evaluations failing to make the grade. To earn an IIHS ‘Top Safety Pick’ certification, a vehicle now has to not only earn top (‘good’) ratings in the Institute’s moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint crash tests, but a ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ ranking in the small overlap frontal crash test.”

Are you surprised by the list of the 2014 safest cars?