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3 On Your Side: Small SUV Crash Tests

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― Owning a small SUV will have you shelling out less at the gas pump, but will it protect you in a crash? 3 On Your Side's Jim Donovan has the results of recent crash tests and finds that having certain types of safety equipment definitely helps.

Side air bags and electronic stability control are helping to move small SUV's in the right direction.

"The safety of small SUV's has improved. Not only are they getting better crash test ratings than just a few years ago, but they are also coming with safety equipment that used to be available only on luxury models," says Adrian Lund, President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety; an insurance industry financed research group after it put the latest models of small sport utility vehicles through high speed crash tests.

According to Lund, "Four of these vehicles earn our top safety pick award for good performance in frontal crashes, side impacts, and also rear impacts, and for having electronic stability control as standard equipment."

Those top safety picks are the:

2008 Mitsubishi Outlander
2008 Nissan Rouge
2009 Ford Escape, which is also sold as the Mazda Tribute and Mercury Mariner
2009 Volkswagen Tiguan

"The Volkswagen Tiguan got perfect scores in our crash tests, not only is it equipped with these side airbags as standard equipment, but the rigid side structure did a good job of minimizing intrusion in our side impact test," said Lund.

Most of the vehicles improved from previous tests after they were redesigned. But the 2-door Jeep Wrangler received a worse rating than in had in the past! Without side airbags in the side crash test, it got a poor rating, the previous design received a marginal rating.

For full results of this latest round of tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety visit:

http://www.iihs.org/

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