Best of The Auto Professor’s Safest Cars
You Have a Lot to Consider When Looking for a Safe Car. Use Auto Grades to Guide Your Decision.
The Auto Professor’s “A” Lists for the Safest Cars
Maybe you are looking for the safest cars to buy or just checking on the safety of your current car. To help you explore your options, here you can explore our lists of the safest cars by type (e.g., sedan, SUV) and our head-to-head comparisons of popular models.
Safest SUVs
Safest Sedans
Safest Small Cars and Sports Cars
Safest Family Cars
Looking for car safety recommendations for older adults, teen drivers or young families? Check our Car Safety Guide for safety tips and recommendations for the whole family.
Determining the Safest Cars: It’s Complicated
Picking a safe car seems pretty simple — follow the ratings and you’re set. You’re wrong. The traditional car safety systems can be misleading. In other words, choosing the safest car is more complicated than you think.
5 Stars Doesn’t Equal Safest
Let’s start with the traditional safety rating systems like NHTSA Star Ratings and IIHS Safety Ratings. If you’re like most Americans, you assume that by buying a 5 star-rated or Top Safety Pick, you have the safest car. Unfortunately, that’s a myth!
Though there are many flaws in the traditional rating systems, Auto Grades addresses two of the largest. First and foremost, the biggest problem with both systems is how they determine safety rankings — using only crash tests. Crash tests are performed in controlled laboratories and don’t reflect what happens in the real world. The second issue stems from the first. Crash tests use a such a narrow set of variables that they make it difficult to compare safety rankings between similar types of vehicles. And, they make it impossible to compare safety between dissimilar vehicles (e.g., cars of different sizes or weights).
So if you are considering a midsize SUV and a compact SUV, you can not compare their ratings using the traditional systems. But, with Auto Grades, you can!
We created Auto Grades to address the flaws in the existing car safety ratings. Plus, we wanted to give you real information about how well cars protect drivers on the road. Learn more about how Auto Grades compares to the other car safety rating systems.
Using Auto Grades to Find the Safest Car for You, Personally
We built Auto Grades with the goal that it would become a key part of buying a new or (new to you) used car. Because we are using real information from real crashes to rate the safest cars, many times, for the most popular cars, we can give you a personal Auto Grades. Learn more about how to get a personal Auto Grade by watching this video. Along with more realistic car safety ratings, Auto Grades outperforms other systems in comparing cars of all sizes and types. Learn more about how to use Auto Grades.
