The Safest Cars of 2008

The safety of a vehicle is usually a top priority for car shoppers. To help consumers choose the safest vehicles possible, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) selected 36, model-year 2008 vehicles as the safest vehicles of the year. Funded by auto insurers, the IIHS performs 40-mph offset frontal crash tests, side-impact crash tests, and rear crash tests every year on various new models. The vehicles that made the Top Safety Picks list performed the best on all three tests. In 2007, the IIHS began requiring vehicles to have Electronic Stability Control (ESC) in order to be considered for the Safety Picks list. This is a wise decision, considering some experts estimate that as many as 10,000 fatal car accidents could be avoided every year if all vehicles were equipped with ESC. Below you will find more information about the IIHS’ testing process and their Top Safety Picks.

Selections for 2008

About the Test

The IIHS conducts three separate tests at different speeds to evaluate how a vehicle performs in a frontal-offset, side-impact, and rear-impact collision. The frontal-impact test is performed at 40 mph. The vehicle’s safety is then evaluated on the amount of intrusion into the passenger compartment, an analysis of a slow-motion film to evaluate how well the crash test dummy’s movements were controlled by the restraint system, and the injury measurements from a dummy placed in the driver’s seat. Performed at 31 mph, the side-impact crash test performance is evaluated against similar criteria. The rear-impact crash test is performed at 20 mph and evaluates vehicles on measurements of the forces on a dummy’s neck and the vehicle’s head restraint geometry.

Additional Resources:

• IIHS’s Top Safety Picks
• Safest Cars for 2008

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