The Safest Cars You Can Insure

For those drivers that are always looking for the safest cars to drive, the IIHS has just the list for you.

Did the car you’re looking at buying make the list of the safest cars?

Year after year the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tests vehicle after vehicle and provides ratings of the safest cars. These safety rating not only help consumers that are looking to purchase a new vehicle, they also help the insurance companies.

Insurance companies use the safety rating to determine the base premium of some of the coverages for each car with this information. The safer cars will have lower premiums, and vehicles determined to be not as safe as they should be will have higher premiums.

Of all the vehicles tested by the IIHS, here are the safest of the safe cars for 2013, and how the IIHS determines which ones make the cut.

How the IIHS Determines the Safest Cars

The IIHS tests vehicles on how well they perform in front crash tests, side impacts, rear impacts, and rollover crashes. After the testing, each vehicle is rated as good, acceptable, marginal, or poor in each test and overall.

The safest cars that pass these tests are rated as a “Top Safety Pick” and the safest of the safe are rated as a “Top Safety Pick+”. To be a “Top Safety Pick+” the vehicle has to earn a good rating in at least 4 of the 5 official categories of “moderate overlap frontal crash, small overlap frontal crash, side impact and rollover, plus evaluations of seat/head restraints for protection against neck injuries in rear impacts” (IIHS). The 5th category can have no lower of a rating than acceptable.

While the IIHS has been awarding vehicles with the “Top Safety Pick” designation since 2006, the designation of “Top Safety Pick+” is something that was just introduced in 2013.

The Safest Cars for 2013 per the IIHS

These are the vehicles that were rated as a “Top Safety Pick+” of the 2013 models. The list is alphabetical and not in any particular order of one vehicle on the list being safer the other vehicles below it.

Of the 13 vehicles that made the list, all of them are midsized cars and 11 of the 13 are moderately priced.

• Acura TL
• Chrysler 200 (4-door)
• Dodge Avenger
• Ford Fusion
• Honda Accord (2-door)
• Honda Accord (4-door)
• Kia Optima
• Nissan Altima (4-door models built after 11/12)
• Subaru Legacy
• Subaru Outback
• Suzuki Kizashi
• Volkswagen Passat (built after 10/12)
• Volvo C60

Which of these safest cars are you looking at buying