New standards for headlights and front-end crashes are making it harder for new cars and trucks to receive an insurance-industry-backed group’s highest safety rating. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) gave just 15 vehicles its highest rating of Top Safety Pick+ for 2018, compared with 38 for 2017 and 48 for 2016.
For the top rating, many vehicles were tripped up by the addition of a passenger-side small-overlap front crash test that was added to the criteria for the award. The IIHS has been rating vehicles for driver’s-side protection in small-overlap front crashes since 2012 but only recently developed the test for the passenger side. It released the first test results in October. Vehicles had to get an Acceptable or Good (top) rating in the test to be named a Top Safety Pick+.  While automakers have been beefing up the structural integrity of the driver’s side of their vehicles, some may have neglected the passenger side, IIHS said. IIHS senior research engineer Becky Mueller told Car and Driver that automakers have been adding cross bracing and stronger metal to improve areas around the vehicle’s door frame and floorpan. “Vehicles that applied the same structures to the driver and passenger sides of vehicles typically performed well for both the driver and passenger small-overlap tests,” Mueller said. “This means that manufacturers already have the know-how to better protect passengers in small overlap.”...