Car shoppers certainly have a number of priorities in mind when making their ultimate purchase decisions, and typically safety is high on their lists. In early December 2006, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) gave shoppers additional information to ponder by naming 13 vehicles as their Top Safety Picks for the 2007 model year.

A nonprofit research and communications organization funded by auto insurers, the IIHS conducts 40 mph offset frontal crash tests, side-impact crash tests and rear crash tests on a selection of new models each year. The vehicles on the Safety Picks list performed the best in all these tests and offer the best protection for their passengers. For this year, the IIHS has added the requirement that a vehicle must have Electronic Stability Control (ESC) to be considered as a Top Safety Pick.

"Our crash tests cover the most common kinds of real-world collisions," says Institute president Adrian Lund. "Designating Top Safety Pick winners based on the tests makes it easier for consumers to identify vehicles that afford the best overall protection without sifting through multiple sets of comparative test results."

This Year's Winners

The winning vehicles were chosen from among current models of small, midsize and large cars, plus minivans, small SUVs, midsize SUVs and luxury SUVs. This was the first year that SUVs were considered eligible to be a Top Safety Pick from the IIHS.

The IIHS chose 13 vehicles in these seven categories as the safest vehicles. There were no domestic-brand vehicles in the winners, and several winners from 2006 did not make the grade for 2007.

The IIHS calls out the Ford Five Hundred, Mercury Montego and Chevrolet Malibu as doing well in the crash tests but not offering stability control. These vehicles were Top Safety Picks in 2006. The Honda Civic was also a winner from last year that didn't make the grade for 2007. According to the IIHS, this was because most Civics don't have ESC, and those that do don't have rear head restraints rated "good" for rear crash tests. No small cars were considered Top Safety Picks for 2007.

"The idea of tightening the criteria for the award is to encourage more vehicle safety improvements," Lund says. "Last year a car could win with an acceptable rating in the rear test instead of the highest rating of good, and ESC wasn't considered. Now it's tougher to win, and some of the 2006 winners don't meet the criteria for this year's award because the manufacturers haven't improved the head restraints from acceptable to good or don't offer ESC."

Subaru and Honda/Acura had three winners in this year's list, while Audi fielded two top picks, the only other manufacturer with more than one winning vehicle. Honda winners include the Pilot, CR-V and Acura RDX. The Legacy, Forester and B9 Tribeca were top picks from Subaru. Audi had the only large car winner—the A6—and the midsize A4 was also a winner.

Crash Test Evaluations

The IIHS's frontal crash evaluations are based on results of 40-mph frontal offset crash tests. Each vehicle's evaluation is based on the amount of intrusion into the passenger compartment, injury measures from a Hybrid III dummy in the driver seat, and analysis of slow-motion film to assess how well dummy's movements were controlled by the restraint system during the test.

Each vehicle's side evaluation is based on performance in a crash test in which the side of the vehicle is struck by a barrier moving at 31 mph. Ratings reflect injury measures recorded on two instrumented SID-IIs dummies, assessment of head protection countermeasures, and the vehicle's structural performance during the impact.

Injury measures obtained from the two dummies, one in the driver seat and the other in the back seat behind the driver, are used to determine the likelihood that a driver and/or passenger in a real-world crash would have sustained serious injury. The movements and contacts of the dummies' heads during the crash also are evaluated. Structural performance is based on measurements indicating the amount of B-pillar intrusion into the passenger compartment.

Rear crash protection is rated according to a two-step procedure. First, measurements are taken of head restraint geometry—the height of a restraint and its horizontal distance behind the back of the head of an average-size man. Seats with good or acceptable restraint geometry are tested dynamically using a dummy that measures forces on the neck. This test simulates a collision in which a stationary vehicle is struck in the rear at 20 mph. Seats without good or acceptable geometry are rated poor overall.

Here are the IIHS's Top Safety Picks for 2007:

Large Cars

• Audi A6 (manufactured in Dec. 2006 and later)

Midsize Cars

• Audi A4
• Saab 9-3
• Subaru Legacy

Minivans

• Hyundai Entourage
• Kia Sedona

Luxury SUVs

• Mercedes-Benz M-Class
• Volvo XC90

Midsize SUVs

• Acura RDX
• Honda Pilot
• Subaru B9 Tribeca

Small SUVs

• Honda CR-V
• Subaru Forester