Subaru’s latest Forester is the first vehicle to pass every element of the tough new ‘small overlap front crash tests’ in North America.
Conducted under the auspices of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the small overlap front crash test, as the name suggests, puts even more pressure on front-end safety than the conventional full-front barrier test. An IIHS study in North America in 2009 showed these sorts of crashes represent around 25 per-cent of frontal crashes which resulted serious or fatal injuries to front seat occupants.
After its test, the latest Subaru Forester was the only one of 13 small SUVs tested to earn IIHS’ ‘Good’ rating and score the desired ‘Top Safety Pick+’ standard.
There are only 20 vehicles listed in the ‘Top Safety Pick+’ category and this standard studies performance in the small overlap front tests, the moderate overlap front as well as side, rollover and rear tests. To be selected a vehicle must earn good ratings in four of the five tests and be ranked no less than ‘acceptable’ in the fifth.
Subaru is the only brand with all models sold in North America ranking as IIHS Top safety Picks for four consecutive years (2010 to current) and the latest Forester is the third Subaru to be awarded the ‘top Safety Pick+’ standard (Liberty and Outback are the others).
“With the redesigned Forester, Subaru’s engineers set out to do well in our new test and they succeeded,” explained IIHS’ Joe Nolan. “This is exactly how we hoped manufacturers would respond to improve protection for people in these kinds of serious frontal crashes.”
