The all new Honda Civic has became the first small car to gain a “good” rating in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) new small overlap test. Honda’s win was helped by their second generation advanced compatibility body (ACE II) structure. Both the Civic two- and four-door variants earned the rating. Chuck Thomas, chief engineer of automotive safety for Honda R&D Americas Inc., remarked that the ACE II reinforced the body structure of the 2013 Civic, adding around 26 lbs.
Volvo likewise achieved similar marks thanks to an update on the airbag algorithm of its XC60 luxury sedan to make sure that the side curtain airbag deploys during collisions.
The new overlap test assesses how well vehicles could handle a 40-mph frontal collision in which there is 25-percent overlap with a five-foot-tall rigid barrier. This is a modification of the IIHS’s moderate 40-percent overlap test. The percentage used to describe the size of the test refers to the part of the vehicle’s front end that hits the barrier. The small overlap test attempts to establish what occurs when a vehicle’s front corner collides with another vehicle or an object like a tree or utility pole. The Mazda 6 earned “acceptable” ratings from IIHS, all of which are 2013 models except for the 2014 Mazda 6. These were the models involved in this round of testing.
