Are Midsize Luxury SUVs the Safest Type of Car?
Midsize luxury SUVs swept the latest IIHS Top Safety Pick+ awards. Are they really safer than their cheaper counterparts?
Written by Andrew Kidd
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
The midsize
luxury SUV
segment had more IIHS Top Safety
Pick+ winners than any other segment, claiming 14 of the 65 titles. But are midsize luxury SUVs—such as the Audi Q5, Genesis GV70 and Tesla Model Y—just safer than other non-luxury vehicles in general?Getting into methodology of IIHS Top Safety Picks
The
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
—an automotive safety testing nonprofit—recognized 65 models with its 2022 Top Safety Pick+ award compared with last year’s 49. The organization attributed improvements in headlight offerings among automakers helped to bolster the number that qualified this year.To qualify for a Top Safety Pick+ rating, vehicles must receive “good” ratings in IIHS’s bevy of crash and restraint tests. They must have an advanced or superior rating for available front crash prevention in vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluations. Finally, “acceptable” or “good” headlights must be standard.
To qualify for a standard Top Safety Pick rating, vehicles must have all of the same ratings mentioned above, but “good” or “acceptable” headlights must merely be available, not standard, and vehicles only qualify for those awards when equipped with those headlights.
Tech matters for safety ratings
Headlights are pretty important when it comes to
vehicle safety
, and the better the headlight, the safer a motorist might be in that vehicle. So the distinction between Top Safety Pick and the coveted “plus” reads as a matter of headlight quality and how willing manufacturers are to offer pricier safety features as standard.Not so much a problem for midsize luxury SUVs in general, which are often loaded with expensive extras that would make their proletarian-by-comparison brethren blush. The luxury accouterments that many of these SUVs boast—like the front-crash prevention systems on the 2022 Genesis GV80—make the already-formidable midsize luxury SUV even safer than its run-of-the-mill counterparts.
That’s not to say non-luxury SUVs aren’t safe; you’re likely to find many of the same safety and driver assist features available on higher trim levels of an automaker’s standard lineup.
It’s also no secret that many automakers use the same set of bones for their luxury vehicles as they do for their non-luxury offerings, otherwise known as a shared platform.
This becomes apparent when you compare an automaker’s mass-market lineup with its luxury marque’s offerings. A great example is the Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade, or thenFord Escape and Lincoln Corsair (which also share the same bones as the new Ford Bronco Sport).
Tougher standards
Fair warning that the Top Safety Pick award list might look a little different next year; IIHS is introducing two new tests designed to simulate more real-world dangers to the average motorist.
Regardless of how safe your vehicle is, you’ll still need to insure it.
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4.7
