If a car gets a high score or award for safety, it means that it might be safer than other cars on the road. But to get that rating, it had to undergo a multitude of crash tests that would show how it would perform in an accident and how it would keep New Jersey residents safe.
That means car manufacturers had an idea of how cars would perform in various accidents. And while the car goes through multiple crash tests to get its safety rating, the truth is that it doesn’t have to perform equally on all of those tests.
What do the different ratings mean?
There are two major organizations that test vehicles — the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). To get an overall rating, a car must get a certain score on all of the various crash tests that are done to see how a car might perform in a motor vehicle accident.
However, until recently, there was a lot of attention given to driver-side safety and not a lot to passenger safety. This was such a problem that the IIHS added a passenger-side crash test to its system in 2017, and manufacturers must account for this in order to get a good rating.
What does this mean for you?
Sometimes, a car can perform poorly in a certain crash test but still get an overall good or decent rating. In an ideal world, this would be disclosed to you before purchasing a car or the car manufacturer would make changes.
However, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, you end up in a motor vehicle accident and sustain serious injuries due just to the cars manufacturing.
What if you’ve been injured in a crash?
Safety ratings are meant to help you pick out a safe car, but these ratings can be hard to understand and even the highest-rated cars can leave you with serious injuries. If you believe your motor vehicle accident injuries were worse due to the car’s manufacturing, it may be wise to reach out to a lawyer today.