highway

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick award for 2010 goes to 19 cars and eight SUVs. And for the first time, the vehicles were tested on roof strength, to measure protection in a rollover. Top Safety Pick winners also must have electronic stability control, which research shows significantly reduces crash risk. This is the second time the Institute has tightened criteria since announcing the first recipients in 2005.

According to the IIHS report out today, Subaru is the only manufacturer with a winner in all four vehicle classes. The automaker earns five awards for 2010, followed … Read more

About a week ago, I read an article online about how automotive industry insiders were recently given a sneak preview of the 2011 Chevrolet Camaro convertible, which is reportedly slated to begin production in the near future. With all the dire financial straits General Motors has found itself in the last few years, this is definitely good news--I'm sure that I'm not the only who would hate to see such a classic American muscle car tradition bite the dust.

In fact, there seemed to be a lot of rumbling amongst industry reports that the 2010 Camaro might have … 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 number of vehicles on U.S. roadways has grown by 7 percent over the last five years. But the number of times those vehicles have collided with deer has swelled by much more than that.

Using its claims data, State Farm estimates 2.4 million collisions of vehicles with a deer occurred in the U.S. during the two-year period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009 (100,000 per month). That's 18.3 percent more than five years earlier. To put it another way, one of these unfortunate encounters occurs every 26 seconds (although they are … Read more

To demonstrate the advances in motor vehicle safety over the last 50 years, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducted a unique crash test using a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu and a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. Both cars are going 40 mph and the vehicles collide offset, driver side to driver side. This is the same crash configuration represented by the Institute's 40 mph frontal offset barrier test, which is used to rate the frontal crash performance of new cars.

Bigger really is better when it comes to driver safety in a head on collision. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, minicars and microcars take a lot more damage than their midsized counterparts do in 40 mph car-to-car collision tests.

The IIHS this week published its findings, and posted a Web video on YouTube.

Although smaller cars are a lot safer than they were just a few years ago, they crumble and buckle in head-on collisions. The smaller, lighter weight cars are also propelled backward during a crash, causing further damage to the car.

According to the test … Read more

How dangerous is your commute? The answer may depend on the weather.

In addition to speed traps and red light cameras, Njection.com is now offering people the option to view the traffic accident history of a route based on past weather conditions using the Njection Mobile iPhone application.

Njection took five years of accident data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and merged it with global weather conditions from WeatherBug.com. Using Microsoft Virtual Earth, this mashup enables people to see what accidents have occurred in a particular area, and if they want, filter the data to show … 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