Crash Testing for Safety

For many buyers, especially those with families, safety is a major concern when shopping for a vehicle. The main two organizations that perform automotive safety testing are the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Both have easy-to-use websites (IIHS.org and NHTSA.gov) that provide vehicle ratings.


While the NHTSA is a government agency, the IIHS is a nonprofit organization supported by insurance companies. Let’s take a look at the IIHS’s testing procedures to better understand how a highly rated vehicle makes you safer.

Testing Procedures
The IIHS advocates measures to avoid a crash, but accidents are inevitable, so the Institute conducts crash tests to evaluate front, side, and rear crashworthiness. A vehicle can earn one of four ratings in each test: Good, Acceptable, Marginal, and Poor.


Frontal Offset Test: The frontal test is a 40 mph offset crash with a dummy representing an average size adult male in the driver’s seat. Forty percent of the front of the vehicle strikes a barrier on the driver’s side. The barrier is made of aluminum honeycomb, and the IIHS says the forces in the test are similar to those in a crash between two vehicles of the same weight, each going about 40 mph.


The vehicle is evaluated based on measurements of intrusion into the occupant compartment, injury measures recorded on the dummy, and slow-motion film analysis of how well the restraint system controlled dummy movement.


The dummy’s head, neck, chest, legs, and feet are assessed for injury. Slow-motion film shows how well the seatbelts, airbags, steering column, head restraints, and other restraint features control dummy movement. Keeping the dummy from moving too much prevents another interior collision, or a partial or complete ejection from the vehicle. Intrusion on the safety cage is measured in 10 places in the driver seating area, and the front crush zone is evaluated for how well it managed the crash energy.