The latest passenger safety ratings of seven small SUV's have been released and only five of them received a good rating.
These results come from multiple crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety or IIHS. These tests focused on how well passengers are protected in a crash.
Seven 2018 small SUV's were tested and the BMW x1, Chevrolet Equinox, GMC Terrain, Jeep Compass, and Mitsubishi Outlander got good ratings. The Mitsubishi Outlander Sport received a marginal rating in passenger safety, and the Ford Escape got a poor rating. Both of these SUVs had airbags that didn't deploy.
The IIHS says Ford did reinforce the structure on the driver side of the escape to improve protection but did not do it on the passenger side.
The IIHS started evaluating passenger-side safety measures in 2017 to encourage manufacturers to offer the same level of protection for front-seat passengers as for drivers.
