Safest Car Brands

Top Safest Cars for Women: Insights from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

In this episode of 'Women Buying Cars,' host Meredith Reynolds delves into car safety, a top priority for women shoppers. Reynolds, a former teacher turned used car dealer, emphasizes the importance of keeping families safe on the road. Drawing on data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) from 2015, 2020, and 2025, she highlights standout brands such as Subaru, Volvo, Mazda, and others. She discusses the advancements in car safety technology over the past decade and the significance of features like blind spot monitors and adaptive cruise control. The episode encourages listeners to empower themselves with knowledge and confidence when purchasing vehicles.

00:00 Introduction: Women and Car Safety
00:36 Meet Your Host: Meredith Reynolds
01:04 Gratitude to Listeners
02:22 Episode Frequency and Personal Updates
03:12 Top Safe Car Brands: An Overview
05:07 The Evolution of Car Safety Features
09:57 Safe Car Brands: Detailed Analysis
16:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

0:02

When shopping for cars, women consistently rank safety at or near the top of their priorities. Women wanna look good in their car and feel good in their car, but we know that keeping our precious cargo, our kids, our family. Safe is really the number one thing. So which vehicles are going to keep us the safest on the road? We will talk about that today on women buying cars. You are listening to women buying cars, and I'm your host Meredith Reynolds. I'm a former teacher turned used car dealer, and I'm here to teach and empower women to walk into a car dealership with confidence and walk out with the car that's right for them. Welcome back to Women Buying Cars. I'm Meredith Reynolds, owner of Reynolds Automotive in Merriam, Kansas. We are a used car dealership, and if you are in the Kansas City area, we would love to help you. I want to start by thanking everyone who is listening. I am so incredibly grateful to you, Thank you to everyone all over the United States and all over the world. It is blowing my mind. When I look at the stats and see where people are listening, cities in the United States I have never heard of. it looks like almost every state is represented, which is crazy to me. And then I look at the countries where people are listening. And I'm shocked by that too. Thank you so much to my loyal listeners in Frankfurt, Germany. I see you and I appreciate you, but I have also people listening in parts of Africa, India, Australia, south America. I mean, it's just amazing. I had no idea when I started seven months ago that my voice would be going around the world. I am so flattered and I love it, and I just thank you and ask that you continue to spread the word. Share my episodes and keep tuning in and keep downloading those episodes. It really means a lot to me and I hope that you will continue listening, continue helping me get the message out so that we can continue to empower women. My goal is to always have an episode out every two weeks because that is doable for me as a business owner and a mother and a wife, and a friend, and a church member, and everything else that I do. this summer. I was only able to get them out once a month, which I did not see that coming, but that's what happened from being out of town, from spending my days off from work with my daughter who was out of school for the summer. And so I just wasn't able to get as many episodes done. And at first I was really stressing about it and then I thought, you know what? I'm gonna give myself some grace. This is what we're gonna do, this is how it's gonna look, So we'll just get an episode out when we can. Now that school is back in session, I intend to go back to my every other week releasing a new episode. Okay, so today we're talking about safe brands. I wanted to come out with like a top five list, top five safest brands of vehicles. turns out like many things, it's not that simple. First of all, things change year to year, brands are putting out new models, reimagining the models, changing things, adjusting every year. So I can't just say that Subaru is the safest brand because it truly depends on the year. And the model of the car, I was surprised at. Some of the things I found out though i'm relying on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. This is an independent, nonprofit, scientific, and educational organization that is dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries and property damage from motor vehicle crashes. This is from their website. I have turned to them because they are not profit driven. They are not trying to redirect people from their website to aside the sell cars. This is simply a non-profit. That's whole mission is to reduce deaths and to get information out on motor vehicle safety. So. Having said that, I looked at mainly three different years, 20 15, 20 20, and 2025. We sell used cars, so we're definitely seeing that 2015 to 2020 age group mostly on our car lot, but I want to be able to compare that to the newest vehicles. A lot of vehicles make the list. I only looked at the very top, which is top safety pick plus, because otherwise it was just too overwhelming to go through all the top safety picks as well. So many cars make these lists now because cars are safer than they've ever been. You might have an argument or a discussion with someone on that topic. Someone will tell you that a car from the seventies was, you know, solid. If it got in a wreck, it's not gonna just crumple up the way a car today will. It wouldn't have been totaled out. It would've been a fender bender and people would've moved on and to a degree that is correct. Cars today are meant to crumple up. And that is to protect the people inside the vehicle. If you were in a car from the seventies, it was big and solid, or the fifties or sixties, the car itself would not experience as much damage as a vehicle in the same wreck would today. However, the impact. From that wreck would be transferred to the people inside. Not to mention that the fact there's not any airbags. Today's cars have crumple zones, which means the car is meant to crumple up like a wad of paper in those zones, and in doing that, it absorbs the impact of the crash so that the people inside are experiencing less of the impact. So the vehicle may not hold up as well, but what really matters? The people inside, they're going to hold up better. So cars today are safer. The newer the car, the safer it's going to be because new technology is constantly coming out. New innovations are constantly being invented. And becoming more mainstream across all cars. So when we are looking at a car from 2025 versus a car from 2015, it's more likely to have safety features that will prevent an accident from ever occurring. Backup cameras are pretty standard by 2015, there's probably some models that did not have them in 2015, but the majority of cars are gonna have backup cameras in 2015. But during the last 10 years, blind spot monitor has become much more standard lane assist, meaning keeping you in your lane if you start to veer out. Adaptive cruise control, which I've talked about in another episode, I'm not a huge fan of, but it is a safety feature. It is available on most modern cars now, probably wasn't 2010 years ago. Cross traffic alert. If you are putting it in reverse and there is a car moving perpendicular to you, meaning you're pulling out of a. Space and someone is going down the parking aisle, you're gonna be notified. That's not necessarily true from a car from 10 years ago. So technology is constantly changing, which can be good and bad because the more stuff you have on a car, the more stuff that can go out and need to be replaced. But a lot of this is there for safety and is saving lives. If you listen to my last episode, you know that we recently sold my dad an all electric Ford Mustang Mach E, and when we were driving it. It has a technology that actually alerts you if you are starting to not keep your eyes on the road. There is a driver facing camera that is watching your eyes, and if your eyes are not facing forward enough, if you're looking at the radio, if you're looking at your phone, if you are falling asleep, it's going to start alerting you that you're not watching the road and to. Get your eyes back on the road. Okay, so things that I wish I could go back and tell myself 20 years ago, Hey, 20 years from now, this is the kind of stuff your car's gonna be able to do. It would've blown my mind, right? It's very Jetsons like. It's very space age. But these things just kind of creep in a little at a time. And then you look back and say, my gosh, 10 years ago. Cars weren't anything like this. It's amazing what cars can do there are cars that can read stop signs, so if you are about to blow through a stop sign, the car sees it and knows to apply the brakes. That is unbelievable, but it's real. And like I said, the newer the car, the more stuff like that it's going to have. To keep you from ever getting in a wreck in the first place. Okay, so the next time your grandpa is trying to tell you that cars were safer in the fifties and sixties or seventies or eighties, even, now you know what to say. So let's talk about some of these safe brands. What brands are known for keeping you the safest? Looking at data from the IIHS from 20 15, 20 20 and 2025, I really just tried to look for patterns and here is what I found first of all, I went into this expecting Subaru to kind of blow everybody out of the water because Subaru very much markets that They are an incredibly safe vehicle. I know that Subaru uses safety to design the car around. They are primarily focused on safety, and so safety dictate. What the car looks like so that the windshields are larger to minimize blind spots. The side windows are designed in a way to minimize blind spots. everything they do surrounds the idea of safety. So I expected them to be at the top the whole time and looking at 2015, they were different Subaru models showed up more than anything else on the 2015 list. very close behind were Acura, Lexus, Toyota, and Volvo. Other makes were on the list as well. There were some Hondas. There was a BMW, there was a Mercedes But those Subaru followed by Lexus, Toyota, Volvo. And Acura. stood out as being the safest in 2015. That's close to the era that I'm selling cars, so that makes sense that those Subarus were at the top. 'cause I sell a lot of Subarus. I'm familiar with them. When we jump ahead to 2020, Subaru is still at the top. However, it has been nudged out by Mazda. Which was on the list in 2015, but it was not a standout. Mazda has really upped their game in the way of safety. They have seven different models on the list of top safety pick plus for 2020 other standouts that year. Audi, Genesis, Honda and Toyota. Okay. Volvo lost a little bit of footing in 2020. I don't have an explanation as to why. Okay, because Volvos are like Subarus known for safety, so I am surprised in 2020 they were not at the top. When we move ahead to 2025, Mazda is still at the top. So this is news to me. I did not realize they had put so much behind the safety of their cars. Hyundai also makes an appearance at the very top. They have six models on the lists, Genesis, which if you don't know what Genesis is, it started as the luxury line for Hyundai and now it's its own separate line. And they are gorgeous cars. Nice to know. They're also very safe. Volvo was up there at Mercedes, started getting more cars on the list, and then of course. There are several others. Toyota is another one that is on the list quite a bit. Does this mean if you want a safe car, these are the ones you should buy? Not necessarily, no, because like I said, many cars are very safe. There are Kias on the list. There are a couple of Nissans on the list. Okay. So it's not that other cars are not safe enough, it's just that those are the companies that are putting out more safe models than anyone else. Okay? The safest of the safe, if I were to expand my search and to not just look at top Safety Pick Plus, but to look at Top Safety Pick, which is still fantastic. So it's like getting an A instead of an A plus. Then there's lots more to choose from. Okay. There'd be more Kias, there'd be more Toyotas, more Hondas as far as pickup trucks go. I did notice that the really consistently, the only ones making the list for Toyotas and Rivian Rivian is an all electric pickup truck. Okay, so again, just to recap the companies that are showing up the most consistently in the last 10 years. Subaru, Volvo, Mazda, and then depending on the year, Hyundai slash Genesis, Audi Notice I never said Ford. Okay? There was a Ford I saw on one list. It was the all electric Ford Mustang Mach E. I did see an explorer on one list too. I've forgotten what year it was. But notice I didn't say a lot of Fords. I didn't say a Chevys. But if you went out today and bought a 2024 or a 2025 Chevy, it's going to be safer than a 10-year-old Subaru. Because it's going to have more of the safety features that have come out in the last 10 years. If you would like to see these lists, if you would like to look up your own vehicle, then head over to ii hs.org. This is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. They are a non-biased nonprofit and their main goal is to reduce traffic fatalities. If you are looking at our website at Reynolds Automotive, you will see under a car story that there is always a little tab for safety, and it will tell you exactly what the IIHS gives this particular year, make, and model of the car that you're looking at. So that is a great reference. it shows you how it ranks in rollover, front impact, side impact, et cetera. So I'm assuming other dealerships have some kind of information on the car like that as well. If not, ask or just look it up. All you need to know is the year, make, and model@ihs.org. I noticed that my own car is not on these lists, right? I drive a Chevy Bolt, which is a small all electric vehicle. But when I searched for it specifically, I found out it is a top safety pick, just not a top safety pick. Plus, and I feel very safe in that vehicle. if you're looking for a car for your teen, if you're looking for a car to haul your family around in, consider these. Makes that I mentioned and then look up the specific model that might fit your needs the best. Okay, so meaning, you know, Subaru's up there, look specifically at a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek and see where it ranks. I thank you so much for listening. I hope this. Podcast helps keep you safe and informed. Please share this episode with another woman, mom, teen, whoever. Let them know that they can be empowered at the car dealership. They don't need to rely on a man, so send this to them and help them grow. Please reach out to me if you have questions, comments, show ideas, anything I'd love to hear from you. There's a text feature at the top of the show notes. I don't have the ability with that text feature to text you back, but I will certainly mention it on a future episode. Thanks for listening and happy driving.