A common attribute of certain cars that automakers like to advertise — besides fuel economy, range, or cargo space — is their safety.
Our cars carry more than just their driver, and no matter what the size or shape or the number of seats in our vehicles, chances are that the passenger seats will be used to transport someone we love or care about, whether they are our children, partners, friends or the special kinds of people in our lives.
Automakers who boast impressive "five-star safety ratings" do so to ensure drivers that their cars will keep them and their passengers out of harm's way. However, a stunning revelation from Consumer Reports finds that not all cars on our roads get this special treatment.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
The expensive, mysterious world of auto safety
According to Consumer Reports, many new car buyers are met with static when it comes to knowing if their cars will keep them safe in the event of a crash, as a staggering amount of vehicles on sale do not carry any publicly available crash test results data.
The independent nonprofit authority for consumers finds that more than 500,000 of the new cars and SUVs that have rolled out of dealership lots and onto American roads have not had any crash tests conducted by the two main organizations that conduct crash test assessments: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The NHTSA scores its crash test ratings on a one to five-star scale; five being the highest, and the IIHS issues ratings that range from Poor, being the lowest, Marginal in the middle, and Good for its highest rating.
In separate statements to Consumer Reports, the NHTSA said it provides crash-test ratings for 86% of new vehicle models. In 2020, the IIHS crash-tested a sample size representing 97% of passenger vehicles sold.
Which cars get left out of crash tests?
The vehicles that get left out from the perils of concrete walls and crash test dummies are from segments from which buyers would expect much more, especially since they are shelling out for outsized MSRPs. These include sports and luxury cars like the Jaguar F-Pace, Land Rover Discovery, and Porsche Macan, which are vehicles that many buyers entrust to transport their families.
As a matter of fact, no Jaguars, Land Rovers, or Porsches have been crash-tested by the NHTSA or the IIHS, meaning that nearly 150,000 of the new vehicles sold in 2023 have no publicly available safety data.
The issue stopping the NHTSA and the IIHS, unfortunately, is money. To keep their ratings fair, the NHTSA and IIHS buy the cars that they end up smashing in the name of gathering safety data.
Former NHTSA acting and deputy administrator David Friedman told Consumer Reports that the agency would spend upwards of $10 million a year on acquiring cars for its tests.
Priority is given to cars that are top sellers. An NHTSA spokesperson told the nonprofit that the vehicles it tests represent "a broad cross-section that will help consumers make purchasing decisions about the vehicles that best fit their needs."
"To fit in low-volume luxury cars would require either testing fewer cars that are more popular or taking money away from other life-saving efforts," Friedman said.
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A federal stamp of approval, but not the Public's.
Though some vehicles can get away with not having crash test data from the NHTSA or the IIHS, they face some regulatory approval in order to be sold on dealership lots in the United States.
New cars must be able to meet minimum federal safety standards. Automakers wishing to introduce a new car for sale in the United States must provide information from crash tests that they have conducted themselves to the NHTSA, which will determine if the cars meet federal standards.
Some manufacturers' standards are tougher than those of the government. Mercedes-Benz told Consumer Reports that they "conduct up to 15,000 realistic crash simulations and about 150 vehicle crash tests" before an entirely new vehicle is approved to hit dealerships. On its website, Honda says it conducts both virtual 3D crash simulations and real-life ones at its "multi-directional vehicle-to-vehicle crash test facility" in Tochigi, Japan.
However, there are special exceptions to getting vehicles tested by government authorities. The IIHS accepts requests from manufacturers to crash test their vehicles, and the NHTSA sometimes conducts random tests to physically make sure a particular automaker's vehicle is up to federal compliance.
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