2015: A Year of Safer Cars

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has named the vehicles that earned top safety rankings for 2015.

Even as the standards by which IIHS selects winners get ever more stringent, more vehicles are being awarded the top tier designation – Top Safety Pick+. For 2015, there were 33 winners, up by 11 from the previous year.

And that’s after the requirements for the plus designation were revised to include that winners must earn an advanced or superior rating for front crash prevention, a level only achieved if vehicles have auto-brake. Otherwise, vehicles only qualify for the Top Safety Pick designation.

"Although forward collision warning on its own is a valuable feature, we decided to tighten our criteria to encourage manufacturers to offer autobrake. Systems that don't require a driver response to avoid or mitigate a crash have the most potential for reducing crashes," said IIHS President Adrian Lund.

Read the complete article and see a list of the safest cars on IndustryWeek, a companion site of EHS Today and part of Penton's Manufacturing and Supply Chain Group.