2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5, Santa Fe, Sonata Earn IIHS Top Safety Pick Awards
Hyundai’s all-new 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe SUV and redesigned Sonata sedan have earned Top Safety Pick honors from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, while the electric Ioniq 5 SUV was named a Top Safety Pick+, the agency’s highest award.
Related: Refreshed 2024 Hyundai Sonata (Finally) Priced From $28,615
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Head-On Hang-Ups
The deciding factor for all three vehicles was the institute’s updated moderate overlap frontal crash test. In this evaluation, the test vehicle travels at 40 mph into a barrier that overlaps 40% of the vehicle’s width, and a deformable aluminum honeycomb face on the barrier mimics an offset head-on impact with another vehicle also traveling near 40 mph. For 2024, IIHS added a second crash-test dummy to the rear seat, behind the driver.
IIHS still subjects vehicles to the original version of this test as well, with just a single dummy in the driver’s seat. The Institute uses a four-tiered scale for its crash-test ratings: good, acceptable, marginal and poor. To qualify as a Top Safety Pick, a vehicle needs a good rating in the original test, while an acceptable or good rating in the updated test is required to qualify as a Top Safety Pick+.
All three Hyundais earned the top rating in the original moderate overlap test. The Ioniq 5 also scored good in the updated test, with the seat belt keeping the rear-seat dummy’s head a safe distance from the front seatback and sensors indicating a low risk of upper-body injuries.
The Santa Fe ranked marginal in the updated test, with sensors registering a higher likelihood of head, neck and chest injuries, and the lap belt sliding from the dummy’s lap onto its abdomen. The Sonata scored a poor rating, indicating a high probability of upper-body injuries for the second-row passenger.
Front, Side, See, Stop
However, all three cars otherwise performed well in the rest of the battery of tests, ranking good in an additional frontal-crash test and a side impact test. Additionally, IIHS requires cars to have standard headlights that rate acceptable or good and a front crash-prevention system that rates acceptable or good in a pedestrian-avoidance test. All Sonata trim levels include headlights that rank as good; every Santa Fe trim level’s headlights rank acceptable; and the Ioniq 5 is available with two different lights, one of which rates good and one acceptable. In the pedestrian avoidance test, the Santa Fe and Sonata earned a good rating and the Ioniq 5’s crash prevention system was rated acceptable.
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