In its latest barrage of front-impact crash testing, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has given passing grades to five of seven small SUVs, singling out one as a Top Safety Pick. The five were all rated as Good in the passenger-side small-overlap front crash test. These were the BMW X1, the Chevrolet Equinox, the GMC Terrain, the Jeep Compass, and the Mitsubishi Outlander. The two outliers were the Mitsubishi Outlander Sport, with a Marginal rating, and the Ford Escape, given a Poor rating in the test.
Those two vehicles were hit especially hard in the IIHS’s structure category for the test, in which the five other SUVs were deemed Acceptable. The IIHS said both the Escape and the Outlander Sport allowed too much intrusion into the passenger space in the crash, which involves ramming vehicles into a five-foot-tall rigid barrier at 40 mph and striking it with 25 percent of the vehicle’s front width on the passenger side. This test simulates a collision between a car and a static object such as a tree or a light post.
IIHS’s statement said Ford strengthened the structure of the driver’s side of the Escape starting with its 2017 models but did not make the same change to the passenger side. The passenger-side test of the Escape resulted in 10 inches of intrusion at the upper door-hinge pillar compared with five inches for the driver’s-side test. IIHS said measures taken from a passenger-side crash-test dummy indicate right hip injuries would be likely.
“Disparities like this one are why we decided to formally rate the passenger side in the small-overlap test after five years of evaluating only the driver side,” Becky Mueller, a senior research engineer at IIHS, said in a release. “Manufacturers shouldn’t shortchange protection for front-seat passengers.”
In an email, Ford spokeswoman Elizabeth Weigandt told C / D that the company is “committed to designing and building vehicles that meet or exceed applicable laws and regulations across the globe.
“The 2018 Ford Escape has earned the highest five-star overall NCAP ratings in the U.S., Europe, China, and Australia,” Weigandt wrote. “In all other IIHS crash test modes, the Escape has earned the highest rating of Good.”
IIHS also said the side-curtain airbags failed to inflate in both the Escape and the Mitsubishi Outlander Sport.
A Mitsubishi spokesman told C / D in an email: “Safety is a top priority at Mitsubishi Motors. While the IIHS test results for this small-overlap crash test are currently being reviewed, we believe it is important to point out that all of the Driver and Passenger injury measures for the Outlander Sport in this test were rated ‘Good.’ ”
Cars and trucks need a Good or Acceptable passenger-side rating—in addition to Good-rated headlights—to qualify for IIHS’s highest award of 2018 Top Safety Pick+. To get the next-highest award of Top Safety Pick, the vehicles need to achieve Good ratings in crash tests and an Advanced or Superior rating for front-crash prevention as well as have at least Acceptable headlights.
None of the small SUVs tested by the IIHS so far have achieved a Top Safety Pick+ rating, but the Mitsubishi Outlander was named a Top Safety Pick. It joins eight other SUVs tested that have been named 2018 Top Safety Picks: the Honda CR-V, Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, Mazda CX-3, Mazda CX-5, Nissan Rogue, Subaru Forester, and Toyota RAV4.
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