iihs

Saab's all-new 9-4X crossover debuted last year at the L.A. Auto Show, and now it is rolling into U.S. showrooms.

Developed with former owner General Motors, the 9-4X crossover was just awarded Top Safety Pick by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Saab, now owned by the Dutch sports car maker Spyker, said that the first 9-4X was purchased last weekend at Saab North Olmstead in Cleveland, Ohio.

"Before even driving it off the lot, I put my butt into the seat, looked around and bought it on the spot," Martin Reuben, Ohio resident, and … Read more

Think you're safer in that Chevy Suburban than in a Honda Civic? Think again. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released its latest round of Top Safety Picks, and in the small car category, six newly tested cars achieved top marks in all the tests.

The six new winners in the small car category are the 2012 Honda Civic and Ford Focus and the 2011 models of the Hyundai Elantra, Lexus CT 200h, Nissan Juke, and Toyota Prius. They join a group of 14 previously tested Top Safety Pick winners in the small car category, including the Nissan Leaf … Read more

For an unlucky few, a severe accident will indeed be a learning experience. And the Audi Accident Research Unit puts these lessons to good use.

Audi's team of researchers recreates and deconstructs accident events, taking more than 400 photographs of the vehicle and logging approximately 1,300 technical details in its database to improve safety systems. The carmaker has formed a partnership with the AO Foundation, and Audi's accident database will now be available to the organization's global association of orthopedic surgeons.

The partnership will be a new link in the accident research chain. A case isn'… Read more

If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, I'm sure you're probably familiar with the little golf-cart looking car called the Smart ForTwo. These trendy little things are gas efficient, eco-friendly, and easy to drive, but are they safe? Today's video demonstrates just how potentially dangerous these things are in an accident, so pay attention.

It's been noted that this video has an affiliation with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, although this claim has been disputed by some Web viewers. Regardless, this video is neat as it shows the testers setting up the crash … Read more

About 50 years ago, a nonprofit organization called the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety was founded to conduct research on consumer automotive safety and preventive measures to reduce vehicular crashes and personal injuries that occur in car crashes. Recently the IIHS made news by crash testing a car from the era of its inception, the 1959 Chevy Bel Air, against a 2009 Chevy Malibu. The video for the Chevy crash test is readily available, but to sum it up, automobile safety features have come a long way, baby.

Today's video clip is also part of the IIHS crash experiment … Read more

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) created a roof strength rating system to help customers assess a vehicle's safeness. Roof strength is critical to keeping passengers alive and in the car in the event of a rollover accident, according to a press release issued by the IIHS. The stronger the roof, the less likely it will deform.

More than 10,000 people die in rollover-related accidents. While any vehicle can roll in a crash, SUVs are three times as likely to roll in an accident than a passenger car.

To earn a good rating, the vehicle must have … Read more

Forget the death-trap jokes: The pint-sized Smart ForTwo, has earned a full five-star crash rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) for frontal and side impacts. More than 3 feet shorter and almost 700 pounds lighter than a Mini Cooper--and only a third as heavy as a BMW X5--the ForTwo is the smallest car the IIHS has ever tested. Nevertheless, it scored a maximum safety rating from the IIHS in the standard frontal and side impact crash testing, which involves both a 40 mph frontal offset crash and a 31 mph barrier impact. The IIHS findings follow last … Read more

Following our round up of state-of-the-art car safety features, we're continuing our Car Tech safety kick with a roundup of the 18 vehicles that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has chosen as its top safety picks.

The shortlist is pretty evenly split between American, European, and Asian manufacturers, with two entries each from Ford, Acura, Subaru, and Audi. Take a look at the gallery here.